Yesterday’s innovation is today’s expectation. The great new value-added service you added is now expected of you. With every interaction with your clients, you need to be thinking about how you can make them feel great.
In an August 2011 Forbes article, author Marc Compeau wrote about the Satisfaction Formula, a concept that Michigan Leadership Conference keynoter and this month’s Wild Wednesday Webinar presenter, Dave Sweet has built a ten tactic program called S.E.R.V.E. F.I.R.S.T. The formula states that satisfaction can be measured by taking the Experience Minus the Expectation and come up with a positive or negative number.
Last weekend, my wife and I had a high value gift certificate for a very high end, award-winning restaurant. We planned our evening around the experience and can state that our Expectation was for a 10 Experience. Instead, we received the worst service ever on almost every conceivable level. So our Experience was a One. One Minus Ten Equals Minus Nine. (It was the type of bad experience that ends up on Yelp - yes this one did - and with us telling others and naming names). A negative number that high means there is little they can do to ever win us back. I’m not sure if they gave us another $150.00 gift certificate that we would even give them a second chance.
Think of the reverse of that situation though. Have you ever gone into an experience with pretty low expectations only to have them blown away? A high positive number also sends you to Yelp and to telling friends and anyone who will listen only with a positive intent. I’m not telling you that you should shoot for delivering high positive numbers. But I am telling you that you should consistently deliver at least a Plus One. (The reason you don’t want to always deliver a high plus experience is because it becomes unsustainable as your customers expectations can become so high as to make it impossible for you to reach them.)
Here’s the point. Be just a little bit better each time. Maybe smile a little wider. Listen a little closer. Be conscious of your words and attitude. Make them feel like your most important client. Because in that moment, they are.
Paul Kiewiet MAS+ is an industry speaker, writer, consultant and coach. He serves as the executive director of MiPPA. Kiewiet was inducted into the PPAI Hall of Fame and the MiPPA Hall of Fame. He served as Chairman of PPAI in 2007. A former distributor, he founded Promotion Concepts, Inc in 1982 and worked with some of America’s most valuable brands including Coca-Cola, Kelloggs, and Whirlpool.