Coffee in the Lobby

Underpromise, Overdeliver.There's a lot of talk centering around customer service in any industry, and rightly so. And there have been countless words penned and ideas spawned from someone's personal experience at a business, particulary storefronts where it seems the goods being sold are only as excellent as the experience & presentation. Think Restaurants, Coffee Shops, Hotels...Hopefully in your business or department you've strived to achieve ways to serve your customer with excellence and maybe even over-serve them somehow in some way that fits with your people, processes and margins. Hopefully you've put some thought into how you can underpromise & overdeliver.That's all fine and dandy but check this out.How about first ensuring that the expectactions of the customer are actually met. So when an unassuming client chooses to do business with you he gets what he expected to recieve when signing the contract or shaking your hand. Yes I know, you can think of several times where the customer's expectations were unreasonable and you wonder where in the world they arrived at that assumption about your product or service. Not talking about that, unfortunately I believe there is going to be some level of this from time to time in any company, although your goal would be to minimize these occurances of course.So here's an example, I'm sitting in a Radisson Hotel, nice enough, no complaints. However, they do not have coffee in the lobby nor is there any restaurant open where I could buy a cup of coffee without leaving the building. Big deal? No. Am I unhappy with my stay because of this? No. But I kind of did expect I would be able to get my hands on a cup of Jo somewhere in the building, even if it wasn't free.So look at your process & your product, are you delivering what your customer is expecting? Do you have a system in place to ensure they are not feeling under-served but are too shy to call you and complain. Hard as this may be to believe there are lots of customers that will not complain to the company but will talk negatively about their experience with you to their friends that very weekend.It doesn't need to be much to miss the mark here, it doesn't even need to be much to go the extra mile (suddenly I'm thinking of Marriott's free cookies...and coffee!)So step into your client's shoes a bit and think through your process from their point of view. Is there somehting small that they're expecting but you're not delivering? Is there anything you could or should throw in with your product or service that would make them totally thrilled they did business with you?Who knows, it may be something as easy as offering free coffee!