Recently I was among a group of professionals from around the Caribbean and a discussion on excellent customer service ensued. Someone asked when was the last time we encountered excellent customer service and what was most memorable about it. Oddly, no one could have recounted a recent experience within their respective country. One lady shared of an experience she had in North America that was etched on her mind. She felt valued. Others claimed that they offer excellent customer service in their business, but they were yet to experienced it.

However, there are individuals in each of the countries presented who are motivated to give excellent customer service, however, we haven’t yet gotten to the place of making excellent customer service a culture.

Over the next couple of weeks we will examine the terms “moments of truth, moments of misery and moments of magic.” A moment of truth could be described as the first few seconds of an interaction between a customer and a service provider – be it a receptionist over the telephone, a sales representative that comes to your place of business, a waiter at a restaurant or a clerk at a store.

It is that moment when an impression is formed in the customer’s mind – favourable or unfavourable about the organization. A moment of truth could also be described as the make-or-break moment. Those first few moments that determine whether the customer is desirous of having a relationship with you and your company or whether the customer will avoid any future interactions and will share their negative experience with at least 10 other persons.

Customer service expert, motivational speaker, author and trainer, Shep Hyken, in one of his monthly newsletters said that each moment of truth could either be a moment of misery or a moment of magic. According to Shep Hyken, in 1986 the president of Scandinavian Airlines, Jan Carlzon, wrote a book called Moments of Truth. In the book, Jan Carlzon describes a moment of truth in business like this: “Anytime a customer comes into contact with any aspect of a business, however remote, is an opportunity to form an impression.”

Jan Carlzon then took that simple concept and transformed an airline that was failing into one of the most respected airlines in the industry.

He identified some examples of moments of truth in his airline business as:

• “When you call to make a reservation to take a flight.
• When you arrive at the airport and check your bags curbside.
• When you go inside and pick up your ticket at the ticket counter.
• When you are greeted at the gate. When you are taken care of by the flight attendants onboard the aircraft.
• When you are greeted at your destination.”

While not all moments of truth are controlled by people, all the ones listed above are, this means that Jan Carlzon employees had the opportunity during each interaction to create either a moment of misery or a moment of magic for their customers.

What about in your business, have you identified some examples of moments of truth? Have you established a benchmark for moments of magic? Most people, if not all would agree that in almost every company, more focus is given to creating moments of magic for the external customers than for the internal customers. Some companies invest in annual customer service training and develop customer service mantra and policies to influence the service that employees give to customers. However, a key to achieving satisfied external customers is to first achieve satisfied employees. Someone said to treat your employees the way you want them to treat your customers or even better. If you are serious about delivering excellent customer service, take the focus off customers and put it on your employees. Start by fostering a culture of excellent customer service internally and it will automatically be transferred externally.

Join us again next week as we examine moments of misery and then moments of magic.