Why I’m Deeply Paranoid About BY STEVE SATTERWHITE
“Just having satisfied customers isn’t good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create Raving Fans.” —Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles I’m sure that almost every executive would agree that great customer service should be a priority for every business. But the difference between good and great customer service is almost as great as that between night and day. Here’s what I mean. In the early stages of our fast-growing IT services company, I started to get obsessed with how to deliver the best customer satisfaction. I don’t mean just really good customer service. I mean I was maniacally focused on delivering “WOW!” levels of customer service—A “10” on a scale of 1 to10. And not just most of the time. I was obsessed with delivering this level of service with every customer, every engagement, every day. I became obsessed not because I was some sort of business genius. Or because I thought it was a good idea. I became obsessed because I was deeply concerned that if we didn’t deliver, we would be fired. You see, at that time, we took on some fairly large outsourcing contracts with some pretty big clients. Because we were a young and growing company, a significant part of our revenue was tied up with one 800-pound-gorilla client—that is, an 800-pound gorilla that was constantly threatening to fire us if we weren’t perfect. Everything we did for this client revolved around what it called the “customer experience.” We were continuously measured, monitored and metered by the daily customer-experience scores we achieved on the IT projects we executed for this client. So, with so much of our business tied up with one client, who can blame us for being concerned? I once heard someone say that if necessity is the mother of invention, paranoia is its father. At least it was for us. I started to read everything I could get my hands on about how to deliver great customer service.
32
American Management Association
MWORLD WINTER 2013-14