Making the non routine, possible!

What puts Zappos and Nordstrom on a completely different orbit when it comes to customer service? Besides an unbelievable ability to understand their customer, it also is their knack to handle the non routine. A non routine query from a customer can be best defined as a request from a customer asking a service provider to go beyond laid down offerings and processes. This is where most brands get a shot at instant immortality in the minds of the consumer. And companies who do this with great aplomb are the ones who have a plan. A plan that may involve limitless employee empowerment or well distributed resources.  So even though we know, that fulfilling these queries can create customer satisfaction like never before, companies need to ask themselves this; how tenable is developing a strategy for handling a non routine query?

While planning such a strategy companies need to look at the financial burden that they might be taking on. Completing a non routine query can involve a cost which your business could not have accounted for. Preparing for these costs make it a tricky financial proposition. This leads us straight into another quandary a company faces; how do you empower your employee to handle these queries? Drawing the line for how much discretion you can trust your employee with is never easy. It involves a great amount of training and also smart recruiting. Employees have to buy into your brand philosophy or be trained to execute it to perfection. When you are past the monetary and employee capability conundrums, you will have to ask yourself if you can truly sustain such an effort. Changing track midway and not delivering on such queries can lead to a loss of goodwill as customers will immediately sense something is out of place. From that point on, getting back in the good books of the customer may take a greater effort.

So to sum it up, the three key requisites are: financial ability, employee empowerment and sustainability. These are by no stretch of imagination, the only questions you need to ask. A lot of it comes down to top management will and operational nous. The results are there for all to see, the commitment is what you need to ensure. So are you ready to become a Zappos or a Nordstrom? Now that, is not a non routine query!   

Blueprinting the Service Design

When we experience exceptional service, we are instantly taken by the person who delivers it and give some amount of credit to the company. We talk about it to friends and family at tea parties and tell them how a certain guy changed our day with some great service. We talk about it at every opportunity and gradually the story becomes the story of the heroics of one service representative. In the process we often forget to give enough credit to the company who set the right conditions for such an act to be performed. You might just have overlooked a very well planned service design which is in play to provide you that memorable service. So let’s explore this idea a little further.

Southwest Airlines is miles ahead when it comes to a well planned service design. They have manuals and instructions for every action that seems so unique and memorable to you. Southwest has designed things in such a manner including their training formats that allows any newcomer to embed themselves in the Southwest service culture. At no point does a well detailed design take away from employing the right kind of people. But identifying the right set of people in a market where they are in incredible demand makes for a challenge of a very different kind. Building a service design that allows an employee to adapt and deliver can be the key to providing that elusive customer satisfaction your brand is expected to deliver.

A couple of questions you might want to ask yourself as companies are: Do you already have a design in place which is not adequately defined? Do your employees fully understand it and is it being audited from time to time? Are there any loopholes in your design which allows employees to under deliver? Does your service design need a revamp to manage your brand’s current expectations? A plethora of questions, but ones that need pointed answers. Answers that can help you design that memorable service experience that your customer would talk about at that next tea party.