Service Moments of Truth Through the Eyes of Branding

Ever since Jan Carlzon, former CEO of Scandinavian Airlines, wrote a book called Moments of Truth, the phrase has become de rigueur in customer service. ^[9] It has come to mean those defining moments when customers evaluate products and services and pronounce "This is good" or "I don't like this." Industries, such as the hospitality industry with many complex customer interactions, can have thousands of moments of truth every day.

The term has become so integrated into customer service language that many do not know it originated in bullfighting. It is that critical point in the bullfight when the matador faces the bull in the defining moment of truth: is the matador going to defeat the bull or be defeated? Through arduous training, matadors have been trained for their precise moments of truth. They know exactly what to do. They seldom lose, rarely are even injured, though fighting live, angry bulls is admittedly dangerous work. Matadors clearly understand the essence of their moments of truth. They have pictured just about everything that can happen and behave precisely with those pictures in mind, or they are matadors no longer.

Unfortunately, too many organizations simply put their customer-facing staff into the service ring without an ounce of brand training. At best, they receive generic service training that many refer to as "smile training." Most organizations assume that people who interact with customers are knowledgeable about basic human interaction and will therefore intuit the appropriate way to behave toward customers. That could be the situation if your aspiration is simply good generic service, but there is no way to intuit appropriate on-brand behaviors without at least rudimentary brand knowledge. Since, in many cases, employees do not even know what the brand message is, through no fault of their own they simply do not have enough information to deliver branded service.

And who do you suppose notices that? Who do you suppose is experiencing that off-brand moment of truth? Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, the well-branded advertising agency, talks of two moments of truth: when consumers choose and when they use. ^[10] If marketing promises something specific to consumers, the organization needs to be as concerned about what happens during service interactions as when customers turn on their televisions in the morning and watch ads.

off-brand

Dave Ratner, owner of Dave's Soda and Pet City in Massachusetts, saw an ad by Tweeter that emphasized its staff's "boatload of knowledge." He needed a minidisc player and walked into a Tweeter HiFi Buys store wanting to take advantage of that knowledge. "Hi, I want to buy a minidisc player and accessories if somebody can show me how to use it." He was told, "I don't know how it's used, but they're supposed to be really easy." Dave says, "The boatload of knowledge just capsized."

If you visit the Tweeter Web site, it is filled with plenty of aspirational statements about the intelligence and knowledgeability of the staff. ("Expert Salespeople. Our salespeople are dedicated professionals, highly trained experts on the equipment who use plain language and guide you toward the right decision.") Its opening graphic, "We love this stuff!" speaks to an intense involvement with the products that the salesman Dave Ratner ran into obviously did not have on his boat.

Moments of truth are particularly important for new customers. A customer who has been to Tweeter several times might excuse one staff worker who is clearly lacking a boatload of knowledge, but a first-time customer can be turned off permanently by a single experience that contradicts the expectation created through brand marketing. ^[11]

^[9]Jan Carlzon, Moments of Truth (New York: Ballinger Publishing, 1987).

^[10]Kevin Roberts, e-mail communication with the authors, January 2004.

^[11]See Folkes and Patrick, "The Positivity Effect in Perceptions of Services."