In service organisations, many ‘expectations’ are set by the organisation providing the service. ‘We reply to letters in five days’, ‘we answer calls in twenty seconds’ etc.
Does your organisation set expectations? Compared to those do you under-deliver, or over-deliver? And how do you know?
When managers of service organisations study their system they often learn the expectations set bear little relation to what customers actually experience.
When service organisations study their customers (‘how do you use what we do?’, ‘what does value look like to you?’, ‘what matters to you?’), they often learn there are things that can be done to create much greater value for customers.
Sometimes they find new opportunities that would otherwise have remained undiscovered; in some cases entirely new services/businesses have been created.
Service is all about building relationships with customers. Some companies seem to do all they can to avoid building relationships with customers
Two examples: Using mystery shopping and using third parties to conduct customer research.