After a recent visit to Chester Zoo, a lady named Fiona Gray
returned to her car to find a note left by a kind hearted member of staff. The
note explained that a member of the car park team had noticed that her rear car
tyre looked a little flat, so they had gone to the trouble of pumping the tyre
up a pressure of 30psi and that would hopefully be enough pressure to get the
car home.
The note (as shown in the above photo) has since gone viral on
the internet, has headlined in several newspapers and is a great lesson to businesses
everywhere that if you place great customer service at the centre of everything
you do it will mean customers coming back time and time again.
Additionally, it demonstrates how customers can become your
secret sales and marketing team, by going away and telling stories about the
service they received. At the time of writing this blog, Fiona’s Facebook post
has had 90,000 likes.
Before I move on, I do believe it is also worthwhile mentioning
the name of the hero in this piece, Paul Weaver.
What Paul did is commonly known as to provide a CNE (Critical
Non Essential). A term I first came across whilst reading the book ‘Winning’ by
Sir Clive Woodward. Sir Clive learnt the terminology from an Australian Dentist
by the name of Paddi Lund. I highly recommend both Sir Clives’d book and
Paddi’s book, The Happiness Centred Business.
If you pay attention in your business and provide meaningful
CNEs, it can be the springboard to take your business from a good business to
and outstanding business.
Essentially, CNEs are the parts of your business that
differentiate you from the rest of the competition.
As the name implies they are not essential to your service
(Paul didn’t need to pump up Fiona’s tyre), but it is how you ensure the quality
of your customer service is far superior to your competition.
At Paddi Lunds Dental Surgery, you are greeted by
your own care nurse and every aspect of the sensory experience is totally
different to any other Dental Surgery, fresh flowers are everywhere, there is a
full size cappuccino machine, and they even bake dental buns on site! You get
your own waiting room where you are served tea in bone china cups. As for the
actual dental service you are offered a pain free guarantee.
In isolation these non-essentials don’t define dentistry or win
more business, but together they give Paddi’s business the winning edge against
his competition.
Interesting question “Do you think Paddi is the cheapest
Dentist around or do you think the service he provides allows him to charge a
premium?”
For today’s businesses, the ever increasing and more
competitive marketplace, means that your Critical Non Essentials, assuming you
have some, will be the difference that makes the difference between you and
your competition.
It has been estimated that, in some sectors, a customer’s
lifetime value is 20 times their annual spend. So if a customer spends £1000
per year with you and enjoy the experience they have a potential £20,000
lifetime value. Alternatively that’s the potential £20,000 loss if you don’t
look after them!
Questions you might like to ask yourself:
- Where are the flat tyre opportunities in your business?
- What standards are you setting?
- What makes people talk about you?
- What makes our customers look forward to doing business with us?
- What have you got in place to ensure your customers tell others about you?
- What do you need to do to do to make your customers experience so good that you no longer need to sell your product or service, instead you need to ration it?
In the world of business, biggest doesn’t
necessarily mean best. A change of focus from trying to be the biggest in your
market to being the best will certainly pay dividends. You can’t always outsell
your competition but you can definitely out serve them.
If you enjoyed reading this blog and would
like a more in depth look at how you can provide meaningful CNE’s and
Outstanding Customer Service take a look here
Thoughts:
“The
customer experience is the next competitive battleground” Jerry
Gregoire
“Kind
words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless” Mother
Teresa
“Well
done is better than well said” Benjamin Franklin
“Quality
is remembered long after the price is forgotten” Gucci
Family Slogan
“A
delighted customer is the best business strategy of all” Uknown
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