Is Your Service Edgy?
The weather was the type that drives you indoors on a Saturday afternoon. It had been a hard travel week and I needed some unwind time; perfect conditions for two back-to-back Academy Award winning best picture movies. The first was the 1995 winner – Braveheart; the second was the 1996 winner – The English Patient.
The order of movie viewing was a big mistake. I only watched 2/3rds of the second movie. Now, before you play the “Guy Movie” card, you should know I actually prefer movies with more plot and less gore. But, Braveheart was so “in your face,” heart-pounding edgy that The English Patient seemed plain vanilla by contrast. The first movie made me ready to go out in the front yard and charge something; the second made me ready for bed.
I was on the Zappos.com website buying my wife a pair of shoes. I needed to get a bit of help from their call center smart person. The experience was terrific … and, a lot of fun. Then, I tried to order a shirt from another well-known e-tailer, including a conversation with their call center helper. The second experience was as unexciting as The English Patient.
Customers are generally bored with service these days. They long for Braveheart edgy. They want sparkly and glittery; a cherry on top of everything. And, when they get edgy, every other service provider is compared to that memorable experience.
So, what are you doing to stimulate all your customer’s senses? Think of the service provider with the most passion, most pizzazz, or greatest boldness. What if you invited them to reinvent your service experience? How can you decorate your customer’s experience in a way that makes it exciting, original, fun, entertaining, unusual, special, different, amazing, or any other descriptor that can take your customer’s breath away?
Writer Bio: Chip R. Bell is the author (with John R. Patterson) of Take Their Breath Away: How Imaginative Service Creates Devoted Customers. He can be reached through www.taketheirbreathaway.com.
photo credit: E. Bartholomew
