Customer Service is the answer not the question..

The majority of customer experiences are judged on the single criteria of the quality of the customer service.This is valid but not always appropriate.

Customer service should be the end result of  a series of exchanges and not the sole deteriminant of how good a company has performed.

The old adage that “coffee stains on the passenger trays tells me that the engines are not being looked after” is very apt.

If a company can’t get the last part of the equation right then it shows that there has to be an inbalance somewhere else for the answer to be wrong.Too often the key elemnets of the experience and customer touch points are ignored or badly handled.

Take a holiday example.

Olympic Holidays were great at getting me and the family to the hotel which was fantastic.If asked at this point I would have given them 12 out of 10.Great price,great service and attention to our needs.

It all fell apart very quickly.

The Rep was never around to ask if things were OK,excursions were poor and under delivered on expectations and were massively over priced.

On some excursions guests were simply dumped in small towns for hours at a time with nothing better to do than spend money in tourist shops and in local cafes.There was no explanation of what these tours actually would entail merely a promise of something to be savoured.

OK,I know that holiday companies are there to make money and that package holidays are just that,packages of experiences,mostly poor.Choice and free will prevailed and guests did not have to pay too much for too little….but…

A key brand,Olympic Holidays,clearly failed in their handling of the individual customer experiences and ultimately led many guests to change their positive perception of them to a very negative one.

Every facet of the customer journey needs to be seen as important if the overall perception that a customer has of a brand is to be positive and reinforced.Failure to ignore any one part just ruins all the good work that had previously been done to establish the brands position.

Why do companies continue to do this?Taking a customers money in the hope that they will come back again is short termism if not supported by an active intent to please at evey stage of the interaction.