Change before customers say goodbye

Change before customers say goodbye

By Budi W. Soetjipto

JAKARTA (JP): Have you ever told someone goodbye, forget it or
I don't care anymore?

The experience must have been so bad that you had good cause
to say these words.

If you can say them to a person, why not tell a product,
either an item or service? Telling a particular product goodbye
means you no longer have to spend your money on it.

That is exactly what Puspita Triwulansari did to a taxi
company. She had been a loyal customer of a taxi fleet for some
time. But when she took cab number 397 from the firm on March 29
this year, she was treated rudely and disrespectfully by the
driver, which led to her decision not to use any taxis from the
company in the future.

Four days earlier, Novita Fitri Roni and her husband bought a
well-known brand of mattress from furniture shop Kiki. It looked
fine; however, about two weeks later, as Novita was about to
change the sheets, she was surprised to see the mattress was torn
in several places.

The couple called the manufacturer to report the problem, and
request a replacement or have the mattress fixed. The
representative who answered their call showed little sympathy for
the problem. He also rejected their request because the tears
were beyond the warranty's coverage.

In other words, they were stuck with a defective product
probably for the rest of their lives. After such an awful
experience, do you think Novita and her husband are going to buy
another product of the same brand? Definitely not.

Some companies might not realize that treating customers the
way the taxi firm and the mattress manufacturer did could
eventually cost them a fortune in lost sales.

AT&T, for instance, reportedly lost millions of dollars
recently because its customers switched over to other telephone
companies in reaction to the way this U.S. giant took care of
their complaints.

Some of the complaints were for the connection and monthly
usage minimum charges that customers never signed up for.

When customers filed their complaints, AT&T representatives
simply said, "It's the customers' responsibility to tell us
(AT&T) about a service they don't want." In other words, the AT&T
representatives blamed customers for letting the overcharges to
happen. The representatives offered no apologies to customers.
Isn't that amazing?

Poor quality

From the aforementioned examples, therefore, it is apparent
that the reason why customers do not return to stores or
businesses is the poor way the companies delivered or provided
the product to consumers, and the poor way the companies handled
customers' complaints.

The reason for customers to switch over to the competitor is
"poor service quality".

Poor service quality denotes a gap between what customers
expect to get and what they actually get.

In other words, poor service quality indicates that the
companies did not deliver or provide the product in the way the
customers perceived they would, and/or did not handle customers'
complaints in the way customers perceived the companies would
handle them.

According to Zeithaml and her colleagues, a customer's
perception of what companies are supposed to do is affected by
his or her experience in doing business with other relevant
companies, word of mouth, a customer's personal preferences
and/or companies' promises communicated through promotion and
advertising (external communications).

External communications are particularly important because
they are the fundamentals of a company's image.

Image is not only related to the customers' perceptions and
expectations, and, hence, a company's service quality, but also
is related to a customer's trust for the company.

Image that is not translated into day-to-day business
practices will lead customers to perceive the companies as having
poor service quality, as well as make customers lose trust in the
companies.

As you may know, once a customer's trust is gone, it is very
hard to get it back.

Customers develop perceptions and expectations, and judge a
company's service quality based on certain criteria.

In a study involving 800 customers of four well-known U.S.
companies, Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1988) identified
these criteria:

1. reliability, which is the ability to accurately perform the
promised service in a dependable manner;

2. tangibles, which represent the appearance of physical
facilities, equipment, personnel and communication materials;

3. responsiveness, which indicates the willingness to help
customers and provide timely service;

4. assurance, which refers to the knowledge and kindness of
employees, and their ability to convey trust and confidence; and

5. empathy, which depicts the caring and individualized
attention to customers.

Berry (1995) argued that among the above criteria, reliability
was the most important one.

His argument is understandable considering that reliability
determines the extent to which the companies can maintain their
image and, thus, customers' trust.

Besides, Berry's argument was supported by a survey conducted
by Illinois Power to identify and rank the factors its 400
largest customers had in mind concerning service quality.

Crucial

Gordon Spainhower, the company's director of marketing, noted
the results of the survey, "Reliability of service stands above
the others as the single most important factor. It is about twice
as important as any factor in the second tier of factors."

However, companies must realize that providing what customers
want in terms of the five criteria might not be sufficient to
prevent them from switching over to the competitor.

The reason: companies performing as customers expect them to
does not give them a competitive advantage over competitors.
Customers might easily be lured away by competitors that offer
better services.

Therefore, it is strongly suggested that the companies to
perform what Berry calls "great service quality," which in
essence is to consistently perform services beyond a customer's
expectation.

The goal of performing great service quality is to impress
customers. Impressive services can carve a niche in a customer's
memory.

The question now is how can a company perform such services.
Let me tell you about my personal experience eating at a Kentucky
Fried Chicken restaurant in my neighborhood of Westlake, Ohio.

When you enter this restaurant, nothing seems out of the
ordinary: the furniture and decorations are the franchise's
standard. The same goes for its menu selection and taste and
quality of food.

What makes this restaurant special is the way the employees
serve their customers. The staff never lets a customer wait no
longer than five minutes usually, but that depends on what they
ordered.

If, for some reason, customers have to wait longer than usual,
the staff are happy to hand out free drinks and/or appetizers
until their meal is served.

Referring back to the five criteria for service quality, that
particular restaurant not only provides a dependable service, but
also demonstrates astonishing responsiveness, assurance and
empathy, which are manifested in the free drinks and appetizers
for waiting customers.

'Wow"

This is what great service quality is all about, the kind of
services that make a customer say "wow".

My next experience was when I took my family on vacation to
Minneapolis, Minnesota. At that time, we stayed in Country Inns
and Suites in Bloomington, a suburb of Minneapolis. The hotel was
pleasant and the room was neat.

But during our stay, my daughter Nina lost her "doggie" doll
when we were sightseeing.

I reported the incident to the manager on duty. She quickly
responded by going to her home to get one of her dolls to lend to
Nina.

Next morning, we received some money to buy another one. The
doll the manager lent to Nina was hers to keep. I was impressed
by what the Country Inns and Suites' manager did for us. It
exemplified the company's responsiveness, assurance and empathy
to its customers. In my opinion, this hotel's service quality was
clearly way above customers' expectations.

Some of you, however, might say that the services provided in
the restaurant and hotel are nothing new.

You could be right, but you have to remember that delivering
great service quality is not about providing a new, or even
sophisticated, service.

It is about providing the service beyond and above customers'
expectations. Hence, it does not matter to customers whether the
service is old or new, simple or sophisticated. As long as the
service exceeds their expectations, the companies should go ahead
and do it.

The writer is a lecturer at the Department of Management,
University of Indonesia, and a doctoral candidate in
organizational behavior at Cleveland State University, U.S.A.