How to Keep Customers Happy by Anticipating Their Needs

“There are no traf­fic jams along the extra mile.” — Roger Staubach, Heis­man Tro­phy win­ning, MVP foot­ball player

Despite many dif­fer­ent busi­ness mod­els, philoso­phies, approach­es and struc­tures, some­times com­pa­nies for­get the pur­pose of their main job. It’s not pro­vid­ing a prod­uct or a ser­vice: It’s the hope that you’ll solve a prob­lem and make the life eas­i­er for the per­son at the oth­er end of the transaction.

And they are hard to find.

The oth­er day, I found myself in yet anoth­er con­ver­sa­tion with peo­ple — who, like me, have a pas­sion for per­for­mance cars and race tracks – about the chal­lenge of find­ing some­one to do work on one of my cars. Some­one who does good work and deliv­ers great service.

I was giv­en the name of some­one who had been rec­om­mend­ed by some­one else, who had been rec­om­mend­ed by some­one else. So, I called him out and boy, am I thrilled!

Why? Because this inde­pen­dent shop own­er is an absolute delight to deal with. He answers all my ques­tions, keeps me in the loop, and even sends me pic­tures of his progress. He may or may not be the best guy (I don’t know because he hasn’t com­plet­ed the work, yet) but his lev­el of ser­vice is amazing.

This guy has shown me that he takes full own­er­ship of my prob­lem, so I don’t have to think about it. And, to me, that’s incred­i­ble val­ue. Some­one else may be bet­ter or cheap­er, but he makes my life eas­i­er because he’s so proactive.

And, even though I don’t have the final bill, yet, I’ve already referred oth­ers to him.

Scal­ing Up the Cus­tomer Experience

As a small shop, he may be able to do this more eas­i­ly. But as a busi­ness gets big­ger, how do you main­tain that lev­el of service?

“Unless you have 100% cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, we must improve.” — Horst Schulze, Ritz Carl­ton co-founder

Orga­ni­za­tions like the Ritz-Carl­ton, that gen­er­al­ly charge a pre­mi­um for what they offer, invest a lot of time and ener­gy with con­tin­u­al staff train­ing to not only be respon­sive to their cus­tomers, but to proac­tive­ly expect what the cus­tomer might need and to offer it before they are asked.

This isn’t rock­et sci­ence. In an ide­al world, the cus­tomer should nev­er have to ask.

The Chal­lenge

• How good are you and your team at antic­i­pat­ing what your cus­tomers need — and being ahead of it?
• How could you, and those who inter­act with your cus­tomers, be one step ahead of what your cus­tomers want or need?