The pursuit of great service begins and ends with love.

Posted on by Billy Tucker
Service begins with love

Some businesses will never get it, never.

I couldn’t be more passionate about great service, my adult life has been peppered by the pursuit of the perfect service experience, delivering it or it being delivered. So far I’ve found that it’s massively hard to give, and sadly rare to get.

A key milestone in that pursuit happened two weeks ago when Yabbit.com launched, Yabbit is the new feedback platform in partnership with American Express [Amex have made it available free and exclusive for American Express merchants in Australia]. Each day the Yabbit team are talking with businesses about the chance to hear from their customers, directly and one to one-ly about their service experience, the good and the bad, the great and the sad. Awesome, sounds good, they say. But they don’t always mean it. Like, really mean it.

And it struck me.

It’s not about service, it’s about love.

What’s love got to do with it?

Love is – Doing things you don’t have to do, but want to do, just because. Smiling because you can’t help it. A spring in your step. Caring about everything you do. Keeping things fresh and new. Doing what you say you will do. Surprising and delighting. Being spontaneous, early, eager, attentive, gracious, careful, thoughtful, even thankful. Just like great service.

Service isn’t about being fast or efficient, it’s about love. Giving your customers a little slice of you, showing how much they mean to you, and finding a team that will behave the same way, not because they are following a blueprint but because they also love to love. Did you show your customers any love today?

Some businesses will just never get it. Never.

When brand is not enough

Posted on by Billy Tucker
Great (british) service

On a recent trip I discovered that Virgin Atlantic aircrew behave like they’re between parties, parties I’m not on the guest list for. To be fair, old dags like me with four kids in tow are made to feel about as welcome as a recently discovered STI.

After three painful flights and a comedy of errors it struck me though, maybe all that cooler than thou jet-set party people bullshit is actually as God himself intended (Sir Richard that is).

My theory emerged when I spotted a peculiar magazine selection in the rack. Wallpaper and Style Street were propped at a jaunty angle, albeit they remained so for the entire 14 hour flight. Hardly surprising they didn’t find a reader I thought given the Virgin customers around me were less likely to want to read them than the Virgin staff. Yet those magazines were carefully positioned to enhance the Virgin Atlantic lifestyle and most likely described in nauseating marketing speak in some operations manual back at Party Town, aka Virgin HQ. I suspect somewhere in the depths of the Virgin Marketing Strategy is a view that there are enough <insert B-list celebrity here> wannabees to build them an airline that makes them feel like they’ve cracked the code of cool.

But here’s the rub. The party’s exclusive and customers are there to fill out the numbers. Virgin have recruited staff who look like the customers they wish they had, i.e. the low disposable income high spending b-grade party-set, and have missed the unfortunate side effect, those people aren’t interested in much beyond themselves – and it shows.  The smallest request is met with a gnash of veneers, and eyebrows are ever so slightly raised (I think) at the suggestion of a problem.

What I don’t get, though, it why Virgin Atlantic ads suggest they are something that they are not? Am I to believe from the TVC below that the airline who suggested you may just get into the Mile High Club on one of their planes is trying to be something different? Because it isn’t obvious yet. And until the service rhetoric has become service reality I’d dial back the messaging slightly.

All in all I’d say the biggest disservice Virgin Atlantic has done, to me and to other Virgin virgins, is to set the expectation too high. They have allowed their marketing message to get ahead of the organisation’s ability to execute which has led to a jarring customer experience. I have no intention of flying Virgin Atlantic again, or any of the Virgin branded airlines for that matter. Qantas just invited me to a BBQ.

What’s a great product without great service?

Posted on by Billy Tucker

It’s rare that a great product would win without the support of great service, so why then are the two so quick to grow apart?

The problem, I think, is success.

Scale and its associated economies support the development of a product  but rarely do they support the development of the accompanying services. There are exceptions, of course, but not many; McDonalds is one, Apple another, Sadly I’m at a loss to think of a third.

It’s worth noting of course that Apple and McDonalds are are notable exceptions to the rule, albeit for vastly different reasons. McDonalds is a very, very large franchisor, and the “product” being sold does not come in a bun, the product is the Franchise. The Franchisee buys a proven recipe for fast food and efficient service. If McDonalds didn’t have control of the entire McD’s ecosystem through a tightly wound Franchise Agreement it would be impossible to maintain its brand of high-margin consistency that allows it to continue selling to franchisees at a premium.

Apple, on the other hand, is all about brand, and that brand extends through the product supply chain to the lifestyle, which includes the process of purchasing and ownership. Prior to Apple seizing control of its supply chain the service part was delivered by 3rd parties, now it is a powerful pillar in the house of Apple.

When a typical business grows, investment is poured into improvements in the production process, reducing the cost of goods and improving margins. The same can’t be said for service, great service at scale is costly, and returns to scale are minimal. In addition, training great service to new staff takes time, so the gap between product uptake and service delivery can grow rapidly if the growth was sudden and unforseen.

Improved margins are seductive, investments in service are not, and so the conflict begins.

As a business owner, you can get ahead. At a minimum there should be a record kept of a consistent service KPI such as Net Promoter that can serve as an early indicator of customer sentiment taking a turn for the worst. Where growth is happening at the expense of service the growth should be arrested until the issue is identified and resolved, hard as it may be to do so.

Positioning your entire business as a product is smart, have a McDonalds-like operating manual with detailed descriptions of service procedures and quality standards, or emulate Apple by asserting service as a key part of your brand, then live it with every touch-point!

To favour growth at the expense of service is a short term win, the positive sentiment that propelled growth in the first place is already evaporating, allow that to continue and chances are your brand will never recover.