Beyond the Billboards

“Why is it that so many organizations spend galactic amounts of money on advertising, trying to seduce people to visit, shop, fly or stay, yet spend so little time and effort ensuring people get what they’ve been promised?” A member of the audience asked this question during a strategy workshop I was conducting and, due to the groans from the crowd, I knew the majority shared her opinion. Common sense suggests that, if you make a claim to provide prompt and caring customer service, you should deliver what you promise. For example, the travel industry (according to one of the leading resources of advertisement insights, Advertising Age), spent over $5.4 billion dollars on advertising and yet how many of them actually flew anywhere close to their customer service claims? If you frequently travel around America on airplanes, particularly if you fly Economy, you know the answer to that. The same goes for many rental car agencies and hotels chains. Cellular phone companies spent over $10.9 billion and automotive industry spent $19.7 billion attempting to grab our attention. Invariably, they all claimed, in some form or fashion, to provide congenial, fair, helpful customer service – to the tune of $36 billion in total advertising dollars. So what were all those groans in the audience about? Why are you shaking your head right now? American consumers know that, today great service is the exception, not the rule. When we encounter it in reality, rather than in a glamorous TV commercial or on a glossy magazine page, we are surprised and grateful. We tell our friends about it. We reward the company with our repeat business. Unfortunately, we can’t quantify the amount of money (and time) spent on ensuring the execution of what was promised by those catchy jingles and pretty faces, but common sense tells us that most companies didn’t spend nearly enough money on their performance compared to the millions they spent on advertising. There are exceptions, of course. There are companies that do honor their promises and match their pledges with great customer service. While small in number, they bask in the rare glow of consumer confidence. Their brands flourish and their profits grow. For over fifteen years now, I have been studying the corporate landscape from this perspective: by contrasting corporate over-achievers with the under-performers. In the early years I did so out of pure curiosity but, for the last seven years, my curiosity has turned into a professional obsession. I almost consider an encounter with a company that provides thoughtful, good-natured service as a romantic affair. No kidding. My heart skips a beat when I find an organization that consistently executes and genuinely cares for its patrons. Once I find one of these lovely companies, I unabashedly stalk them. I observe their daily routines and their leadership initiatives, eager to find out what makes them so beautiful in the eyes of consumers. How do they manage to remain so radiantly profitable and productive? I’m almost euphoric when I discover the basic underlying facts which explain how these companies have achieved and maintained such strikingly attractive personalities. Today I have a team of dedicated, clever people who assist me in this never-ending quest for information about the highest-achieving organizations in our country, and our world. With their help, I have gained a wealth of valuable insights about the reality of great customer service. The pages that follow contain many of these insights. Most were discovered simply by contrasting the actual performances of those who preach good customer service with those who truly practice it. We did not restrict our research to any one particular sector, but opted to examine numerous industries. Our goals were, first, to discover the commonalities shared by the most successful companies and, secondly, to determine how they differed from their direct competitors. Of course we collected an abundance of data, but the essence of our research can be reduced to a few basic principles, principles shared by all highly successful companies and organizations. Finally, we found that the implementation of these basic principles can be measured on a daily basis. As a result, every company can establish its own straightforward, reliable system of accountability when it comes to customer service. For nearly ten years, I served as Director of Corporate Development for an aviation, real estate and auto retail management company. With over fifty years of business under our belts, and annual revenue hovering at a billion dollars a year, it would have been easy to become complacent. However, our founder had always been unyielding in his determination to avoid corporate complacency and self-indulgence. Happy yes, satisfied never. Relentlessly, under his leadership, we searched for ways to improve our performance, and with each improvement, our organization grew. The organization still has room to improve and grow, but the knowledge it has applied thus far has greatly influenced profits, production and most importantly the satisfaction of its consumers.