Are you delivering for your customers?
Whatever business you are in, services or product, can you confidently say you are delivering on your promise to your customers?
Let’s say your business is home delivery of pizza, subs and salads. Let’s determine the elements that are essential for you to deliver value: timely delivery, reliable delivery (you show up), the food is decent and food that should be hot is at least warm, and it’s easy to pay. Lastly, the driver is presentable. That’s about it.
So when it comes to pizza delivery, how do you know if you are delivering on customer expectations?
Are you fielding complaints about late deliveries, cold food or meals never delivered? Are you seeing a large percentage of repeat customers, affirming that you are delivering on what is expected? Do you get complaints about your drivers, being reckless, speeding, damaging personal property? If business is good and there is no patterns of negative feedback, it is safe to assume you are delivering on what customers expect.
If the service you provide is home delivery of a newspaper, how do you know if you are delivering?
Again, it is fairly straightforward: the newspaper is delivered consistently, it is delivered “on-time” (leaves room for interpretation) and it is delivered where it is supposed to be delivered and it is delivered in a format that can then be read. It is nor rocket science.
It has rained nearly every day since April. We have had lousy weather and people are sick of it, including me. I am also sick of picking up a soaked Wall Street Journal daily and on Sundays picking up a soaking wet Sunday Boston Globe. Plastic bags don’t work when thrown in puddles (doh!) and many days the newspaper has gone right from the driveway to the recycle bin.
Ironically, we have a newspaper holder affixed to our mailbox courtesy of The Boston Globe, but neither company can or will deliver the newspaper in this receptacle. I am NOT making this up. Despite multiple emails and phone calls, neither news company can get delivery right.
Another important feature offered by news organizations is the vacation hold request service. Unfortunately, neither The Boston Globe nor The Wall Street Journal can manage this service either. In April, vacation holds were submitted online to both organizations and yet we came home to find the newspapers in the driveway – lovely. Nothing like paying for newspapers while you are away and nothing like clearly letting every passerby know the house is empty.
Neither of these companies are delivering on the basic service that customers are paying them for: a dry newspaper delivered where and when you want it delivered. So, I am cancelling both subscriptions and even that is a hassle. I emailed both customer service emails (over the weekend because that is the only time I have to do such things) to credit my account and cancel my subscription and guess what? That service request is not allowed via email, so I am required to call them during their business hours to close out this saga. So annoying. Any I keep forgetting to make the call.
Will either company care that they lost a subscription?
Nope. Will either company notice? No. Will either company learn from their breakdown in processes to think about simple ways they could solve this and better serve their customers? No. I will join the masses of getting my news online and they will chalk it up to technology, yet I prefer to read the actual newspaper. So they will miss the point.
What can your business learn from this?
Breakdown what you do into its simplest form to identify what you need to deliver to your customer. Just like with the pizza delivery, it is not complicated. Just like newspaper delivery, it is not complex. BUT that does not mean it is easy to deliver consistently.
This is a great way to simplify the parts of what you do that are important to get right. Then make sure you have a way to monitor how you are doing to get them right and keep getting them right. I highly recommend you validate what you think is critical to deliver with what your customer thinks is important to deliver.
How do you know if you are delivering for your customers?
Ask how you are doing. Then be quiet and listen. If you currently survey customers, do you review the feedback and seek to improve or do you rationalize why you can’t do what the customer is asking? Be honest.
Don’t ignore customer feedback. Don’t belittle customer requests, as these nuggets are exactly the areas you can learn from to refine or improve your service. Both news organizations repeatedly stated they CAN’T deliver in the newspaper receptacle. It is their policy to throw the paper in the driveway. Yet, they provided the receptacle in at my house to hold the paper. So, why even set that expectation? That is only going to lead to disappointment. They don’t WANT to deliver the newspaper in the newspaper holder.
Seek feedback on the elements that are essential for your business: Was your pizza hot? Was it delivered in the time expected? Rate the quality of your pizza. What could we do to better serve you?
Are you getting any customer feedback that indicates you have issues with delivering?
Are you ignoring telltale signs that customers are frustrated and ready to leave you? If you are not delivering on a component of your offering that is fundamental to what the customer expects (a dry newspaper delivered when specified), you have a challenge that needs to be resolved. Think of it as an opportunity. If I could contact another service and pay them to deliver the papers to us correctly, I would do it. Instead, I will shift to online.