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Most of the interactions a company has with its customers are service encounters. But how do you give your customers good service?

By the term "service", we're not just talking about giving customers the selection and products they want, and at a price that's reasonable. Service is such an intangible idea (consider how much a service rep's attitude influences a service encounter) that customers often look for cues (like a company's procedures and flow of activities) to help them understand what's really going on.

So, what makes a customer satisfied with service? Better yet, what can you do to enhance a customer's satisfaction?

THE FIRST STEP

Research and common sense indicates the first step to service satisfaction is exceeding a customer's expectations.

But where do expectations come from? Well, every communication you have with a customer impacts their expectations. This includes media communcations, word-of-mouth, and prior contacts with the company.

Here's the simplest idea you can remember about service and satisfaction: The more a customer perceives their experience is better than their expectations, the more they're satisfied. While exceeding expectations is best, minimally a customer's experience should equal their expectations.

This sounds easy and simplistic, doesn't it? But companies often fail at this straightforward idea. Salespeople promise customers the world, and deliver less than expected with the result of unsatisfied customers. You've probably had many service encounters yourself where what was delivered was less than what you expected. In many cases the service failure was due to a difference between the actual service and the promised service. But remember, expectations drive this process, so implicit promises can come from many indirect places.

One lesson for companies is to manage their service expectations appropriately. Set them too high (meaning you'll never meet it) and customers will be unhappy. Better to set them appropriate to what you can deliver. In any case expectations should be managed or else customers will set their own expectations (and they're likely to set them very high). In some cases, it may be best to set low expectations so you can easily exceed them.

WHEN EXPECTATIONS AREN'T MET

Often, customer's expectations aren't met in a service encounter. Does that mean customers will become dissatisfied? Not always. That depends on to whom they attribute the service failure.

When we say "attribute", we mean who or what causes the events the customer experiences. Customers always (implicitly) look for causes of their experiences.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image of Allen Weiss

Allen Weiss is MarketingProfs founder and CEO, positioning consultant, and emeritus professor of marketing. Over the years he has worked with companies such as Texas Instruments, Informix, Vanafi, and EMI Music Distribution to help them position their products defensively in a competitive environment. He is also the founder of Insight4Peace and the former director of Mindful USC.