When a customer's simple moment of truth can be the difference between business success or failure
Steve Phillip
Suicide Prevention and Mental Health advocate, TedX speaker, LinkedIn influencer
It doesn't matter what kind of business you run, you're going to have customers who come to you with an expectation or sometimes simply a hope that your company will be the one that really cares. However, there will be 'moments of truth', experienced by your customers. which will either confirm their worst nightmares about your business or have them singing your name from from the rooftops. What are these moments of truth? Well, read on.......
Your customers want to believe all the hype on your website and your team's LinkedIn and social media sites, which says 'you can trust us ,we really do care, honest!'
Companies and yours may be one of these, pay thousands of pounds to create these messages of hope, these enticing images of a world where, "whatever you've experienced before, our company will provide you with one you'll never forget" and how true that last statement often is but not for the reasons the business intended.
Do you know your customers' moments of truth?
What is a moment of truth? Moments of truth come in both large and very small sizes. It's not the MOT's size that's important but how it's experienced by your customer that really counts.
Your customers will unlock many moments of truth when they engage with your business; from the website which, having spent 20 minutes selecting my partner's Christmas present on, won't now let me process my order, no matter how often I re-check that I've entered the correct information - that's a moment of truth.
On a more positive note, a moment of truth could be when an ageing rail traveller drops most of her coins from her purse onto the floor, whilst waiting at the station for her train to arrive and a couple of rail employees immediately rush to help her and avoid her having to get off the bench to retrieve her rolling change - that is also a moment of truth.
It can often be the smaller moments of truth which really matter. If you promise big things and then deliver on these promises then we expect that. No, it's the little things which really do make the difference between me sticking with your company, despite all the alluring offers presented to me by your competitors.
Let's examine some more moments of truth:
It's your receptionist not acknowledging that I exist when I arrive at her desk, instead she keeps her head down until she's finished that 'very important' call she's on.
It's me arriving at your offices and finding nowhere to park, compared with my accountant who goes to the small amount of trouble to not only ensure I have space but that my name and not their Managing Director's is there to welcome me upon my arrival.
It's you advising me, the evening before my pampering session with you (not actually mine I should stress!) the following day, that your prices have just gone up by 43%.
It's your bank's bereavement service not responding to my calls when my partner of 50+ years has just died and life is already stressful enough.
But it's also when you promise to deliver a package I've ordered by a certain date and then contact me to let me know it will arrive sooner than I expected.
It's you calling me on my mobile, within minutes of leaving your hotel, to let know I've left something in the room, so I can still get back in time and retrieve it.
Life is a game of inches, so is keeping customers
Each of these events, by the way, are actual moments of truth experienced either by myself or someone in my immediate family during the past few days. Life is full of moments of truth or to use the famous line by Al Pacino in the movie 'Any Given Sunday' (if you've never seen it, then watch the video below)"life is a game of inches and the inches we need are all around us" The inches, in this case I would suggest can be the difference between you winning or losing the goodwill of your customers and keeping them for life or losing them forever.
How do you ensure that your business delivers more of the right moments of truth and by doing so, ensure more of your customers buy from you more often and for longer? It's simple, you must put the happiness of your customers above anything else.
Your customers must be your priority; they are more important than your stock order, more important than this week's advertising campaign, than getting your payroll process right, than that 'important' management meeting and until you put your customers first and not just say you do, you will never really create ambassadors for your business who will not only stick with you for life but will bring their friends, family, business associates along for the ride too.
Your mission
Your mission - should you choose to accept it - is, from today, to start to put in place a process that will allow you to better understand what your customers really want from your business compared with what they actually get. From that point you must, at all cost, deliver on your promises or don't make them in the first place.
Good luck. Oh and just a thought before you go……..
If you found this article of interest and you would like help in achieving your mission, please get in touch with me, in my role with Resolve Gets Results we provide a 'Closer To Customers' programme to deliver outstanding customer service.
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Novel and Children's Book Author, CEO Watershed Consulting. Trustee Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust.
9 年Steve Phillip Your piece nails the obvious which is so often missing in companies, large organisations in particular. They come no larger than Yorkshire Water, where I attended a 'Customer in the Room' session at their head office this morning. There was one main board director and nine different representatives from various YW departments and those of their contractors, Amey. The meeting was a result of YW's failure to repair a damaged sewer at my offices in Harrogate. I will not relate the saga of missed appointments, poor communications and unsympathetic attitude at their failure to complete was as simple operation. I was finally obliged to write the story up on my blog, write to the MD and Chairman of Kelda, post the saga on YW's facebook page and tweet the histoire. In one hour after this media barrage I had YW on the phone and then, and only then, did some coherent action take place. But it took desperate measures to be noticed and that is awful customer relations management. In defence of YW, they fixed the problem and asked me to attend this meeting so that they could learn from what it is like to be on the receiving end of what was a complete shambles. And well done them for facing up to it and listening to the customer's point of view. However, In the interim the damage had been done and a lot of my time, an inconvenience to my tenants in my offices and a lot of YW's money has been wasted. Hopefully, my experience will not be repeated again if YW take note of the complaints laid at their door. One particular point which I believe they are going to address is to have one point of contact for customers with problems like mine, a dedicated phone number and an email address that is just NOT one way.
Senior SEO Content Manager, University of Hull
9 年Nice post Steve. Always good to remind ourselves that putting customers needs before our own convenience is one of the most important rules of business. Also, I would add is always doing the right thing. Integrity and good customer service are inextricably linked. Cheers
Exploring Non-Executive opportunities
9 年My previous company sold directly and served 6 million customers - representatives - world wide. The 'game of inches' and 'moments of truth' would serve well as the foundation of a service excellence model for such and any other businesses whose success hinges so critically on achieving and maintaining the unflinching loyalty of their customers. Thanks Steve.
Developing high performance teams, redefining leadership to transform results, and enabling successful transatlantic businesses
9 年Written with passion, Steve, which makes it all the more compelling. I love the concept of Moments of Truth. We must talk....:)