SERVICE EFFECTIVENESS IS DETERMINED BY THE CUSTOMER’S PERCEPTION OF VALUE

Intrawest found themselves lagging behind the competition in a new market.  Since acquiring the property, ski hills and facilities had been upgraded to world-class standards.  In spite of a  multimillion dollar investment, no significant gains were being made in their customer satisfaction metric.  Our bid to help them achieve “top of mind” with the skiing consumer focused on promoting word of mouth.  The proposal was accepted because we would  help them change how  employees think about customer service rather than presenting them with a plethora of silver bullets.  In other words, we recommended  a self-sustaining service culture.  Their Blue Mountain Resort property went on to own “top of mind”.How to shape a service-oriented culture:1.       Make  leadership everybody’s business by: clarifying cultural values, creating a statement of purpose (master brand or tag line), focusing a vision of the preferred future declaring a behavioral ethics platform teaching people how to inspire and discipline each other (using the above)2.     After laying a firm foundation, we introduced “The Three rings of Perceived Value”.  It started with a senior team workshop and eventually cascaded to everybody in the organization. The following graphic provides a thumbnail of the process: from the Three Rings of Perceived Value workshop

The customers’ “total experience” starts with a personal touch, passes through systems/processes, and eventually accesses the product or service. 

 

  A “ricochet” occurs when the trajectory towards “consumer delight” is deflected by a breakdown in the :

• outer  (3^rd)   personal touch ring
• mid     (2^nd) system/process ring
• inner  (1st) product/service ring

1. Most ricochets occur in the second ring
2. Ricochets cause a drop in customer satisfaction and an increase in operating costs
3. Ricochets get extinguished by fire fighting but their underlying causes often go unresolved
4. People spend too much time recovering (putting out fires)

The benefits of a continuous improvement process that eliminates waste and rework:

• Underlying problems get resolved
• Ricochets are minimized
• Cost is reduced
• People have time to focus on customer delight
• The customer’s perception of value is maximized

An example of focusing on the customers perception of value:

1. Employee notices that many of the customers waiting in ski lift lines have runny noses
2. Suggests adding a  tissue dispenser at the base of each lift line (a third ring touch)
3. The Forward Thinking Process Team agrees to this extremely low cost investment
4. The customer satifaction metric rises
5. Positive word of mouth starts happening

The big idea expressed by this example:

People expect a good product/service and systems/processes that make it easy to do business. They don’t expect third ring touches such as adding tissue dispensers.  They are delighted when 3rd ring touches occur.

Service oriented cultures must be; values driven, vision focused, and process-disciplined. Once the costly fire fighting associated with waste and rework is eliminated, employees will have the enthusiasm and time to add third ring touches that will delight customers and foster positive word of mouth.