They both differed on the details, but here’s the main points they raised:

• Both aimed for at least 12 touches a year.
• The touches had to be meaningful.  Producing blog articles are too generic and don’t count.
• They had a schedule so all clients in a particular segment received a similar level of attention – they didn’t just focus on their ‘favourite’ clients.
• Some of the touches involved phone calls.  These could be a ‘how are you going’ call which was just a chat with no hidden agenda.  Other phone calls were more targeted – ‘I’m ringing to talk about ….’.  These calls were relevant and tailored to the needs of the client.  The phone calls were sometimes made by the planner, other times different staff members made the calls.  This helps to stop the client only wanting to deal with one person.
• Other touches included newsletters, invitations to seminars and workshops and targetted mailouts aimed at the specific segment or demographic. 
• One firm sends out copies of relevant newspaper articles – either finance-related articles that are suitable for the client or articles about something they’re interested in.
• They both sent out birthday cards.  Planners I’ve spoken with have mixed views on this, but these speakers said their clients loved receiving them. 

I came away from hearing these speakers and I felt challenged about how I could do this in my financial planning business.  I care about my clients and want to make sure we have plenty of contact with them, but I don’t want it to appear insincere.  We’re working on building a contact schedule that takes some of the ideas above plus some of our own to ensure we touch our clients in a meaningful way.  We don’t want to seem too overbearing, but we don’t want our clients to feel neglected.

How many touches do you think are necessary?  Are there examples of you’ve seen where a business has kept in touch in a regular manner without it appearing to be over-the-top?

I’ve blogged before about how service breakdowns will happen from time to time – they are to be expected when you rely on people to deliver your service.  The interesting thing is that service breakdowns are opportunities – they provide an opportunity to recover from the breakdown and exceed your customer expectations. 

I remember during my MBA reading an article that explained how if you just deliver the service you’ve promised, you’ll meet your client’s expectations.  Exceeding them requires more.  And sometimes when things go wrong, you have the opportunity to not only make things right, but exceed your client’s expectations of the service they were expecting.

The other interesting thing about this video is that it’s heartfelt.  It’s not great quality, there’s no script, but that’s what makes it great – it’s real!  I wonder how much more business the Domino’s store could get as a result of this video.

Anyway, have a look at it yourself and let me know what you think.

Example 1

I was doing some work for a client that required us to get some articles approved by an external compliance area.  They were simple articles that only provided a general overview of the subject matter.  For legal purposes I didn’t want the articles to provide too much detail.  The first set took 6 working days to get approved and came back with an email saying sorry for the delay, but pointing out that the service standards allowed for these approvals to take 5 working days so they were really only a day late.

Example 2

In the financial business we deal with a couple of insurance companies.  We lodge applications for life insurance with these insurers. 

Both companies have internal service standards with regards to the amount of time it takes them to process the application, have it looked at by an underwriter and then send us an email letting us know the status of the application.  Both companies tell us they regularly meet their internal benchmarks i.e. they’re achieving their service standards.

However, one company can process things inside 48 hours, the other takes over a week.  Remember, both are hitting their internal benchmarks.  The second company thinks it’s doing well based on its internal benchmark, however I don’t judge it based on it’s internal benchmarks, I judge it based on my experience with similar companies and the reality is that it is not competitive compared to its opposition.

Lessons We Can Learn

In the first example, it frustrates me that service standards are used to cover up inefficiencies in business processes.  When we send an email with content to be approved, someone at the other end needs to open that email, read the article and decide whether it needs to be referred to a technical or legal area for further checking and verification.  If it doesn’t need to go to those areas, why can’t that person spend another 10 minutes checking the article and approving it? 

What currently happens is that it gets opened, checked and then placed in a queue to be checked later.  To me that’s inefficient.  If you’ve got it open then action it.

The second example highlights the danger of not having your internal benchmarks aligned to external benchmarks.  Always make sure your benchmarks are relevant to the people they affect.  If they affect your clients, then find out what your clients expect and make sure you can meet their needs.

Do you have service standards in your business?  Are they relevant?  Do your clients know about them?  Leave a comment and let us know.

I’m at a work conference staying in a resort in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, Australia.

I’ve heard some great speakers today and there are more lined up tomorrow so over the next few weeks I’ll blog about some of the things I’ve learnt.  But today, I want to blog about my experience at the resort.

I’ve blogged before about how delivering service is like putting on a performance - if it’s not rehearsed well, it can go badly.  Well, there have been a few elements to this hotel stay that haven’t gone too well that possibly could have been avoided.  Here are some examples, and some ideas to stop them happening in your business.

You need good staff to deliver on your promise

There’s two aspects to this point – having good staff and having enough staff.

Here’s some interesting events:

• When we initially arrived, we went straight into our sessions until 5.00pm.  We then went to check in to discover the hotel only had one staff member working at reception – there were over 50 of us.  So checking in took a little longer than it should have.  And the hotel didn’t create a good first impression.
• At breakfast they had insufficient staff to clear the tables.  At one stage it looked like over 60% of the tables were empty, but hadn’t been cleared.  I had no option but to sit at a table with someone else’s dirty plates.
• During the breaks in our sessions, there were a couple of times that no staff came into the room to clear the rubbish, top up the water etc. 

Sorry if I’m stating the obvious, but they know in advance how many guests they have staying there so you’d think they could get the staffing right.

Check the premises

In our meeting room I looked up at the light shade and saw a ‘Happy Birthday’ balloon sitting on top of it, right up by the ceiling.  It was obviously left behind from a previous function and the room wasn’t cleaned properly.  I’m a big believer in using checklists for delivering services.  If someone had a list of things to check off, they would have been reminded to check the light shade.

In the room

My room doesn’t have a clock radio, or any kind of clock.  Strange for a hotel room.  It also doesn’t have a list of internal phone numbers, so if I wanted to phone reception to enquire about getting a clock or a wakeup call, I don’t know what number to call.

I’m also a little frustrated with the room cleaner.  There’s a sign that tells me to leave in the bath any towels I want cleaned and to hang up any ones I want to re-use.  This morning I’ve hung my towel up on the towel rail together with my bath mat so I can use them again tomorrow.  I come back to the room tonight and they’ve been replaced with new ones!

Don’t tell me you’re going to do one thing, but then do the opposite.  One of the key elements of delivering good service is being reliable and doing what you say you’re going to do, not saying one thing and doing another.

Deliver on your promise

When you look at this resort on the web, it looks great.  And it is.  It’s in a great location and has great facilities.  But good service isn’t just about looking good; it’s about delivering on your promise.  And this place hasn’t delivered on its promise.

Reflection

Have a think about the areas I’ve highlighted her and think about the equivalents in your business.  Are there areas involving staff that you can improve on, or processes or service delivery?

Leave a comment and let me know what you think.  And if you’re reading on Twitter and like this article, could you re-Tweet it please?

 Photo credit The Edinburgh Blog