Personalizing Service

In his comment on my post from yesterday, Marcus suggests that "Tony's ability to provide top-notch service" was more straightforward than it is for librarians, because the services that we provide are more nebulous.   But the exceptional thing about what Tony did isn't what he provided, it's how he handled the whole thing.  Someone else, handling it in a different way, could have arranged the alternate reservation, given us the gift certificate, and have hustled us out the door still feeling annoyed and inconvenienced.  Truly great service is entirely about attitude and manner.

The key is that Tony took complete and personal responsibility for making sure that our particular need was met.  He wasn't just helping us out with our problem -- it was his problem.  It showed in all of the little things -- he was there instantly when we walked in the door.  During the few minutes that we talked, he never took his eyes off of us, and he never stopped smiling and being pleasant.  He didn't seem the least bit rushed or ruffled.  When he referred to the "technical problem" he didn't go into any detail about what it was and he didn't make any excuses -- he didn't waste any time explaining his problem.  What mattered to him at that moment was us and what he could do to insure that we had as fine a lunch experience as possible.   

He handed the gift certificate to us almost apologetically, signifying that he knew it was an inadequate gesture, but he hoped we'd take it anyway.    He was more insistent with his business card, making sure that I knew that it had his cell phone number on it, and that when we came back we should call him personally.  Giving us the cell phone number meant that it didn't matter to him if we called while he was working or not -- he'd take care of it.

His showing up at Gibson's, then, was all of a piece of it.  He was making sure that we understood that even though he'd passed us on to another restaurant, as far as he was concerned we were still his customers, and it was still his responsibility to make sure that we were taken care of.

Every time I go to one of my favorite restaurants in DC, I am welcomed like the long-lost cousin who has just come in off the boat.  The attitude appears to be, "We're always happy when a customer walks in, but that you, you came in tonight -- well, that just makes our night complete."   It took me a couple of visits to observe that they treat everybody that way, whether it's their first visit or their fiftieth.  I doubt that Tony remembers us as anything more than a blur in the crowd of people he dealt with on that miserable Sunday afternoon, but he made us feel as if we were the most important people in his world.   And I have no doubt that when we call him back, whether he really remembers us or not, he'll make us feel as if meeting us was the highlight of his afternoon.

Imagine if every time someone finished an encounter with someone who worked in your library, they felt that way.

Comments

[Marcus]

Thanks for this, Scott. *What* we do does not matter nearly as much as *how* we do it. This was Tony's genius, and is certainly something we can learn from in libraries. This is actually a lesson for all of life, not just "library life"--I too think that the distinction between "professional" and "personal" life is illusory.

[MarkD]

It is a lesson that could well be learned in STM publishing as well. I don’t know how many STM publishing conferences I have been to where the topic of conversation was; ‘how do we get librarians to understand our business needs.? My response to that statement is always the same; ‘who cares about your business needs?’ Business is about providing a service to a customer, it is as simple as that. Tony has grasped that simple concept. It amazes me how few people really do understand that simple point. I am in my office to serve the needs of my community. You are in yours to serve your community’s needs. How often have you sat in an internal meeting and heard people say something like this; ‘it would be easiest for us if...’ or ‘this product (or service) fulfils one of our needs so let’s sell it to the community..’ or ‘look at this great thing we have done, it makes our job easier (or less expensive)...’ Whee is the customer in these statements?

I blame the MBAs (I have an MBA by the way). We are taught in business school that business is a spreadsheet. What is the profit margin? What is the cost of goods? What is the rate of return on capital? Why are administrative costs 2.5% and not 2.3%? How many responses did we get to that last promotion? What percentage increase in sales did we achieve last month?

Rarely, rarely do you hear the real issues of business discussed in corporate board rooms. If we implement this policy what impact will it have on our service to our customer? Will this change make it easier or harder for our customer to purchase our service? What impression is created about our company among our customers if we implement this plan? Will our customers have a pleasant experience dealing with us? Will this plan fulfil a customer need?

This is what Tony understands. However, if Tony’s boss is an MBA Tony would be in real trouble. Why? Because Scott and Lynn were out of towners. The likelihood that Tony’s extra service would be justified in higher returns or sales is small. According to the spreadsheet, Tony’s effort was wasted on these two marginal customers. It would be difficult for Tony’s restaurant to make a profit on the cost of the gift certificate alone. Tony’s effort on your behalf lost his company money on the spreadsheet. You walked away a happy customer but you had a negative impact on the company’s bottom line. You are in fact, a customer group (of two) that should have been shunted off to the side – given the small likelihood that there would be a profitable return for Tony’s effort.

Come the revolution, let’s put Tony in charge!

[obsto]

Tony’s effort wasn't wasted, even in economic terms, because a satisfied customers will share his experiences with 10 others (an unsatisfied with 21, I've heard). And I'm sure Scott's Blog and this discussion will be red by many more.

[kgs]

Dang, I was going to write, "It's not what we do, it's how we do it," and I was beat to the punch. That anecdote is a very pointed example of how to do it good.