15 ways to improve your service

1. Save
Help customers save time and money but make sure you build excitement around convenience or low-cost and don’t design-out the human touch.

2. Self-help
Help customers to help themselves. Provide tools and clear processes. Experiment to find the right balance between being either invisible or too obtrusive in your support of them.

3. Listen and learn
Find ways to capture insight on the needs and preferences of individual customers at every stage - and make sure you can put what you know to good use the next time you meet that customer.

4. Recognise
Recognise at least your most valuable customers - without making other customers feel less valuable. Your most valuable customers might not be the big spenders but the time-serving loyalists.

5. Reward
Help and reward individual customers. Picking your moment and even letting them choose their reward might mean your honest gesture isn’t seen as insincere.

6. Surprise
Stage experiences that customers will remember, talk about and look forward to. But once you start you have to work even harder not to disappoint.

7. Teach
Teach customers how to make better use of what you’ve sold them - without, of course, suggesting that they’re doing it wrong. If they can really use what you’ve provided they’ll feel they’re getting even greater value for money.

8. Include
Always design to include people with particular needs because if what you offer works for them, it will work really well for everybody. And even better if you can do it in ways that don’t make people feel singled out.

9. Enhance
It is possible to provide services that help people to be better human beings and improve their quality of life - without sounding pretentious or shallow. People love even the simplest interactions with other people that make them feel good and make a difference to their lives.

10. Contribute
Serving the community and the environment in which you operate is increasingly valued by consumers. Only die hard sceptics will judge what you contribute to the community that you impact as a waste of their money.

11. Give them reasons to return
Provide real reasons for customers to keep coming back by evolving the experience you provide over time and by helping customers to achieve things or connect with others beyond your own core services - make yourself useful.

12. Make the most of failure
No service is 100% reliable so don’t forget to design your service-failure experience too. Research shows that customers who feel their grievance has been heard are much less likely to leave - and even less likley if they feel you’ve gone out of your way to make amends. In many cases you may only ever meet your customers when things go wrong - so make the most of it.

13. End it well
If a customer is determined to leave then let them go - but make the experience of leaving as good as the experience they had when they arrived. They may still recommend you to others and may come back if they realise that you provide the best service.

14. Be available
The best way to ensure your customers feel out of control and frustrated is to hide from them. Making infomation available is a basic requirement so provide advanced warning of planned changes, explanation, progress reports and let customers know as soon as an operation is complete.

15. Finally.
Great service brands know how to bring their brand vision and values to life - without sacrificing customer needs, wishes and desires.