Shareworthy Service: Consistency and Dependability

“I’m a liar.”

One of my clients said this to me a few weeks ago. It lit this shareworthy service fire (Best Buy making my mom cry just poured kerosene on it).

He voices his own ads on the radio. He frequently talks about what customers can expect when they do business with us. He’d received a couple less-than-stellar reviews of his service team.

“If I’m there on the radio saying one thing … and we’re doing another … well, I’m a liar.”

What a moment. What a frightening, enlightening step-on-a-rake moment of clarity.

As consumers, we’ve grown so accustomed to being underwhelmed and mistrustful of advertising that we’re not even surprised anymore – in fact, we assume it’s the norm – when a company’s long on talk and short on action.

Not my client. We’ve launched a program to measure and reward improvement in our service.

It’s sad that consistency and dependability are facets of shareworthy service, but they most certainly are.

The best way to generate shareworthy service?

Disappoint a customer.

You have to raise the bar with systems, policies and procedures that spell out each interaction with a customer. Your team has to know what is expected of them – every time.

A Big Mac should taste the same whether you eat it in your hometown or Walton-on-Thames. Why? Because we sleep better at night knowing that, whether we even like them or not, certain things are always consistent.

Can you say the same about your company?

Are you saying one thing with your advertising and delivering another?

All the time?

It’s okay if you can’t. It’s an opportunity.

Dependability – Can we count on your company to deliver what you say you will when you say you will?

Consistency – Every time? Consistency is the dependability of your dependability.

And sure, we all make mistakes. My rock-solid dependable email marketing company had a server failure yesterday morning and my email didn’t go out at 5:00 CST like always.

They apologized.

They fixed the problem quickly.

They followed up with me to let me know it had been fixed.

And then followed up again to say they forwarded my thank you note around the office and it made everyone’s day.

An old friend once said, “Tim – eventually, everybody’s going to stub their toe. It’s how you fix it that matters.”

My email marketing company fixed it.

My client is fixing what needs fixed.

How about you?

(It’s about this time in Hazzard County that I should mention the only dangerous thing for you at this point is if you don’t know … then you best get to findin’ out, bub.)