“I don’t understand,” the home services business owner said to me. “I give good customer service but I don’t get a lot of repeat business.”
He was frustrated… and his business was struggling. But then what I told him next SHOCKED him: “You need to immediately STOP giving good customer service.”
There’s an epidemic in the business world (not just in the home services industry): What businesses define as “good customer service” is actually not good at all.
What do you consider to be the good customer service that you deliver? Chances are, you define it as showing up on time, performing your work at a fair price, and being polite and courteous. Sounds like good customer service, right?
Wrong. That’s the baseline service that every customer expects. It’s not “good” service, it’s “minimum” at best. And the reason the business owner I mentioned earlier isn’t getting any repeat business is because his customers received his bare minimum service so he wasn’t memorable.
In my book, Secrets of Business Mastery, I use the example of a couple of restaurants: Consider a restaurant that delivers customer service they would define as “good” – the waiter seats you and hands you a menu; later, they bring your order in a timely manner and the food is hot. The foolish restaurant manager might consider that “good” customer service but it’s exactly the baseline level of service you should expect from every restaurant.
The restaurant that delivers a level of excellence unmatched by others is the one where the waiter greets you with a warm handshake, he takes your coat, he pulls out your chair, he asks you questions and makes specific recommendations, he lets you taste a couple of the wines until you find the one you want; the manager walks by your table and thanks you by name for using the restaurant; the food arrives at your table sooner than you expected and it is amazing; and after dinner, the waiter brings a complementary dessert. Notice the difference between the service that is thought to be good and the service that is truly good?
The same thing happens in your home services business. The home owner doesn’t want “good” (minimum) customer service. They won’t remember you if that’s all you deliver. But if you truly wow them by achieving a level of unparalleled excellence in your service, you’ll lock in that customer for life.
Here are a few things that we do at Gold Medal Services to deliver that WOW level of service excellence:
- We call the customer a few minutes before the appointment and let them know we’re on the way… and we offer to bring them coffee
- When we arrive, our experts look clean and professional, they have a name tag, they greet the customer by name and they ask the customer if they’ve parked in a good spot.
- We provide customers with a very high value information package that includes a ton of great information and free gifts.
- When the work is done, the expert cleans up and leaves their work area in a better condition than when they arrived.
And that’s just scratching the surface.
So stop delivering good customer service – the level of service you deliver is always one degree less than you think it is. Instead, step up and stretch yourself and your team to WOW the customer each and every time. You’ll never wonder about customer loyalty again.
