Set Your Standards for Customer Service

Two of your customers’ most prominent needs are for efficiency and communication. In other words, they want you to get things done quickly and they want you to tell them how quickly. "How soon can you deliver my parts? How soon till I’m back online? How soon does this bus leave? How soon can you fix my camera?"

Communicating the answers to your customers can be easy if you have set service standards that you abide by. Service standards help minimize uncertainty. They tell customers what you will do to ensure their satisfaction. "Your parts will be shipped via express delivery by end-of-business tomorrow. You will be back online within four hours. This bus leaves at 10:00am or when all the seats are occupied, whichever comes first. Our technicians will contact you immediately after examining your camera and provide you with an estimated date of repair."

When customers complain, it’s often because of the absence of service standards that let them know what they can reasonably expect from you.

All well and good, but what happens in situations beyond your control and your normal service standards can’t be met? Communication is your answer. The important thing is to keep your customers informed.

Here’s an example for you. I brought my printer to the repair shop for what I though was a simple alignment. Turns out my printer head was shot, and since it was an older model, the shop would have to order a new one. I explained that I needed my printer in three days and asked them to call me. On the third day, they did call and here’s what they told me. “Mr John, we don’t know when your new printer head will arrive, but we’ll call you every day at 4:30 to update you even if we have no new information.” And that’s exactly what they did. Every day at 4:30, I received a call from the technician with an update and two weeks later, I got my printer back repaired. Was I happy? No. But, I was satisfied that they were doing their best to provide me with top-quality customer service.

Your business is no different, I’m sure. Most businesses do their best to provide efficient customer service. But for those few times when efficiency breaks down, it’s communication that can come to your rescue.

Aim High in Maslow's Hierarchy

Looking for a new approach to meeting your customer needs? Try Abraham Maslow.

You know Maslow. In 1943, Maslow identified five needs that motivate human behavior and arranged them in a hierarchy. The most basic of these are your physiological needs, which cover everything from oxygen to sex. Next up are your safety needs which cover security, stability, structure and order. Climbing higher, we have your need for love and belonging, or your social needs and recognition of your place in a group or family. After that comes your need for self-esteem, which includes validation, self-confidence and a sense of contributing towards the greater good. Finally, on top of the hierarchy is your need for self-actualization, which means becoming everything that you are capable of becoming and being true to your nature.

Of these five needs, the last one – self-actualization – is the hardest to satisfy. This is not because self-actualization is difficult to achieve; rather, it is because the need gets stronger as you feed it. The more self-actualized you become, the more self-actualized you are motivated to be.

So, how does Maslow’s Hierarchy help you with your customer needs? Here’s the idea – when you target customers in advertising, aim as high into the hierarchy as you can. If you aim too low, you’ll miss out on some of the motivation.

Let’s look at a few successful examples:

1. Secret Recipe, what’s that? A cake shop? No, delicious cake is a first-level need. Secret Recipe is a lifestyle café, which feeds on your need for self-esteem.

2. The Malaysian Ministry of Health encourages spending 10 minutes a week hunting and clearing breeding grounds for aedes mosquito larvae. Why, for health? No, rather in the name of love for your family, a third-level need.

3. Buy the Toyota Camry, why? For transport around town? No, to help you spontaneously discover the pleasures in life (from their ad).

When you’re identifying customer needs that you want to meet, aim high. But be realistic. Nobody will believe, for example, that your hammers and screwdrivers will lead to self-actualization. However, better tools are safer tools, and this targets a second-level need.

Targeting your customer’s needs prominently and accurately on Maslows’s hierarchy motivates them to come to you to get their needs fulfilled.

Know Your Customers' Needs

Simply asking your customers what they want, what they need and what they expect from you is an important part of developing your business with them. Being involved with your customers, however, is going beyond simply asking. Being involved with your customers can help you understand their needs more thoroughly and may even unearth needs that they didn’t even know they had.

Being involved means knowing how your customers use your product to improve their lifestyles or their businesses. This calls for meetings, on-site observations and face-to-face interaction. Also, providing feedback channels for your customers and encouraging their use shows that you are open to their suggestions and responsive to their needs as they develop.

Being involved will result in a long list of needs and expectations from your customers that you can use to evaluate your business relationships with them.

Take the needs from this list and divide them into three categories. First, you’ll have the needs you’re currently meeting. This can be a feel good exercise, but it can also be a reality check. Ensure that what you think is happening is for real and back it up with evidence.

Second, you’ll have the needs you cannot meet. These may come from customers who expect too much. Most of the time, this category won’t contain many items, but it’s still good to have them and put them on the back burner for future planning.

What you’re left with will make up your third category, the needs you could be meeting better with a little creativity and action. Pull your resources together and develop an action plan on how you can improve on meeting these needs. Then, take your proposal back to your customer and explain how you can do better business together.

Being involved with your customer means taking initiative. Don’t wait for them to tell you what they want all the time. Help them to detect their needs, and explain to them how you can meet them. This changes your role from a supplier to a true business partner.

Get Involved with Your Customers

How do you determine your customers’ needs and expectations? If you are a customer-focused company, this is probably a part of your business plan already. Many companies, will all good intentions, ask their customers what they need, make the improvements on their products, and anticipate customer satisfaction.

This seems like good customer service on the surface, but two questions arise. First, do your customers really know what they want? Think about yourself as a customer for a moment. While you’re driving your car, popping bread into the toaster, checking your wristwatch, or listening to your mp3 player, are you enjoying how these products benefit you, or are you thinking about how they could be improved? If you were asked, would you have an immediate answer, or would you have to make something up? Generally speaking, customers are satisfied with the purchases they make.

A second question is this: Who knows your product best, you or your customer? You do. You know your potentials and limitations. You know your strengths and weaknesses. You probably have ideas for product development that your customers haven’t even though of. Simply offering what your customers have asked for does not mean that they will buy it.

So then, how do your go about determining what your customers’ wants and needs really are? One of the best ways you can do this is to learn your customers' business. How do they use your product on a day-to-day basis? What tasks are they doing when they use it? How could your product contribute even more to improve their lifestyles or their businesses? Simply asking them can’t provide this information. The more you know about them through close contact and observation, the better you’ll learn and be able to serve their needs.

Here’s an example. I recently had a client ask me to video and comment on all twenty participants in a two-day business presentation skills program. Although certainly possible, this would have taken up a lot of valuable training time and left most of the trainees sidelined while one was receiving comments. In the long term, such a program would have low impact and only moderate value. By working with the company and discovering their key objectives, however, I was able to single out the six sales representatives that they needed to develop, allow them to present, and use the rest of the participants to provide feedback and review. Everyone benefited, and the company’s needs were met.

Of course, asking your customers what they need is still a valuable practice that you can continue. For you to best meet their real needs, however, be involved. The more you about how your customers use your product, the more your solutions will target their needs.