From “Very Good” to “Excellent” Service

Sometimes when you move into more “corporate”-type positions, you no longer interact directly with your customers. You look at outcomes, data, listen to those in the front lines, that’s all good, but nothing replaces direct contact. Some years ago, I felt I was missing part of the stories, but I didn’t want to be intrusive so I created a simple plan to execute with my staff.

The plan was for all of us to randomly pick three customers and contact them via email. Tell them that we just wanted 10 minutes of their time, and if they agreed, to send a day, time and phone number where we could call. During the call, we all asked the same three questions:

1. How did you learn about us?
2. What do you like or enjoy the most about the service?
3. If you could change one thing, what would it be?

By the end of the third question the 10 minutes were almost complete, we closed by saying, you now have my direct contact information, if you ever need something please just write to me. All of them were so thankful to hear directly from a leader in the organization and more than one took me up on the opportunity to speak again later.

In a couple of weeks once we all had our three customers, we met to discuss the results. We learned a great deal from the stories we heard and the quality of the information. In some cases what we learned provided reassurance and validation to some of our decisions, in other cases we realized things we needed to adjust, those that would take you from a “very good service” to an “excellent service.”

I have kept this practice with all my teams over the years. It has made us better at what we do and more empathetic to our customers.