It’s a question we should always ask and yet we often find so difficult to answer. How an organization handles this question (and the answers) will determine its ultimate service success. If you consistently offer what your customers really want, you will be successful.
In a survey, I asked my customers:
“When you are a customer, what makes you most satisfied?”
I kept track of what they said and I tabulated the results. I removed responses that had to do with specific products or services because I was looking for information that would be helpful across many industries and organizations.
Here are the results::
Listen to me.
Know more than I do (about your product or service).
Be easy to work with.
Help me get what I came for.
Smile.
Acknowledge my presence.
Show me you care.
Be honest.
Offer alternatives if you don’t have what I want.
High quality and low prices.
Do what you say you’re going to do.
Keep me informed.
(The results are in ranked order from the most popular response.)
I don’t claim this survey has any scientific significance or statistical validity. (It’s not meant to).
But it is based on real answers from real people so I think it can be useful for many organizations as they work to improve their customer service.
People know what they want when they are customers, believe me. Based on how people responded, I think many of them feel they are not getting what they want.
This list of 12 customer wishes seems basic and intuitive. Yet I don’t believe most organizations are delivering these things to all their customers all the time.
If they were, this list would have been much shorter. People wouldn’t bother mentioning them if they were getting them on a regular basis.
The bottom line
Yet, what is really needed is basic curiosity – the desire to learn things rather than to know things. All too often, we strive to rattle off facts rather than promote understanding. With a little imagination and some thought, we can all do our little part to increase the overall knowledge of the world. True knowledge begins with wonder.
