Perception of Service Is Service!

Credit: Bill Gillespie

I got a haircut yesterday. I’ll pause now to give you time to snicker and make the obvious comments.  Trust me, I’ve heard them all before. I have even said them myself to demonstrate that I am in control of the joke rather than the butt of it. One of the cruel injustices of my life is that I still need haircuts. I’m just never satisfied with the results.

In any case, I got a haircut. In the process I encountered a service behavior that taught me a lesson. I love learning from the most obscure and sometimes brief encounters.

I was in the chair, and it was clear that the lady was stalling. My trim was complete, and she was picking at my head with a brush. It was like she was trying to make my hair go in one direction or another. I haven’t had to concern myself with that since 1990.

She noticed I was curious and said, “I’m sorry. I’m required to spend at least 12 minutes with each customer.”

I’ll pause so you can laugh again. Since you’re curious I’ll go ahead and tell you. We had to kill 4 minutes to keep her out of trouble. Our time passed, I paid what worked out to $1.25 per minute and left. I still had time for lunch before I drove back to the office.

I appreciate what this company is trying to do. I don’t require 12 minutes, but the manager wants to make sure no one feels shortchanged. They know that paying attention to the customer sells stuff. They know any client that feels ignored or tolerated won’t come back. They have instructed their employees to invest the resources they have (time and attention) in every customer.

What can we learn from this? I think it’s safe to say we are in the service business. Printers process thousands of transactions every month. Each one provides multiple opportunities to touch our customer. Each of those “touches” provides an opportunity to make a positive or negative impression.

Notice I didn’t offer neutral. That’s because there is no such thing in business. Everything is always moving in one direction or another. Every relationship is getting better or worse. None stays stagnant.

Being causal about the slightest detail tells the customer they aren’t important. This can be as simple as an error in billing. It can be an option left off an estimate. It can be missing important shipping label copy or sloppy packaging. It can be taking too long to return a phone call or to respond to an email. These things say something else matters more than the request or question the client asked. They hurt our relationships. They cost us orders. They cost us money!

In a previous life, a former employer missed a big order. They were confident it was theirs. Some of them were already counting the money. They simply knew they were going to be slammed for weeks.

Well …They didn’t get it. A competitor … one with no history with the client, stole it from them. The newcomer showed a better design and sold their solution. They did things my company didn’t and, in the process, convinced the customer they shouldn’t be ignored. The job was worth millions. Plus, now the competitor has a relationship with the client.

Now our guys didn’t really do anything wrong. They just didn’t do it as good as the guy across town. The other guy noticed every detail and addressed it. The other guy wasn’t casual about anything. They didn’t assume they had the work. They knew they had to be better than us before they could catch us. Let me say that again. “They knew they had to be better than us before they could catch us.”

That really is the world we find ourselves in today. Yesterday’s innovation is tomorrow’s commodity. Serving the client and designing better answers is a task that is never completed. We will never be finished with change and improvement. Our free-market society demands improving service and better ideas just to survive, let alone thrive.

We should all think about that as we prepare estimates or research answers for clients. A tiny little stopwatch begins running in their brain the moment they fire off an email or leave a message. It’s unspoken but they have a service expectation. Exceed it and you move forward. Miss it and you move backward. You have so much control over your future with the smallest of details.

As for my hair, I’ll continue to visit the 12 minute minimum place. Besides … I can afford 12 minutes every 6 weeks or so. I miss my hair!