Two simple yet rarely practiced secrets of managing a service business are as simple as hell:
- Care about details.
- At least don’t deliver a bad experience.
The amazing thing is how little attention is paid to these two, and how often we encounter service businesses who just don’t get it.
You can easily find a web hosting provider who guarantees 99.99% site uptime and you’ll find at least two instances in a month where your website is not functional. On asking the hosting support, the answer would be something like this: because of some blah blah blah, it is not up. It should be live as soon as the problem gets resolved…Vague answers. No attention to detail. No care about the customer.
You can easily find a restaurant whose mission is to serve and make customers delighted but after organizing a group lunch of 50 people, when you discover that the invoice is 25% higher than what was agreed, the restaurant manager would say: Maybe it is mistake of my staff maybe yours but nothing can be done once the invoice is prepared. Let me act as a third person. I can give you good advice: You should have taken the order details in writing! Which experience can be worse than this in the hospitality industry?
In today’s business, real product or any product or service is Great user experience.
Overwhelming Google ads or Twitter marketing campaign can’t undo one bad experience. Don’t forget that customers’ public testimonials are just one tweet away.
If you can’t deliver a great user experience, you shouldn’t get paid. If you get paid for less than great user experience, you’ll not last long in the business.
