Rob Millard (“The Adventure of Strategy” blog) points to an interview on Client Service Insights blog with Colleen Stewart of Southwest Airlines and highlights the critical importance of the client service experience. Southwest and JetBlue fly folks from A to B just like American and United – but the customer experience is different. It’s not because they have “better” planes or pilots – but because they work harder at the customer experience.
In a survey just published by Rick Telberg of the Bay Street Group respondents rated “Client Service & Attentiveness” as the most important criteria in selecting a CPA firm – ahead of “quality and accuracy of work” and understanding of the clients industry or business.
And consider this comment from Polly La Barre in a recent “Cool Friends” interview on tompeters.com discussing one of the key concepts in “Mavericks at Work” the new book she co-authored with Bill Taylor:
The second principle concerns relationships with customers. Sharing your values beats selling value. That’s the paradox at the heart of the relationship with most companies and their customers today. Companies keep offering better deals, the cheapest, the easiest, the most relevant products, services and experiences. Yet customers seem less and less satisfied with those offerings. We believe there really is a customer satisfaction crisis across the economy.When everything keeps getting cheaper, better, easier, and faster, offering customers something that’s a little cheaper or a little better doesn’t win you a place in their hearts or their lives. Companies and organizations increasingly have had to move away from just selling value to striking a genuine relationship on the basis of distinctive values. They’ve had to devise a psychological contract, much like the one Starbucks has. They’ve redefined customers’ expectations and reinvented an entire category.
Whether you’re an accountant, lawyer or IT consultant – how much time do you spend focusing on connecting with your clients and providing a better client experience compared with doing a better audit, writing a better contract or designing a better system?
What’s more important – your experience or the client’s experience?
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