Do customers really want more personal service? The answer may seem obvious, but is it? It's true that there are plenty of complaints-many of them justified-about shopping in stores where sales and service personnel are in short supply and the workers lack training, courtesy, and a desire to be helpful. But is all this a plea for bringing back old-fashioned personal service? It may seem so, but what's actually happening is quite different and far more significant.
Only those over 50 can remember the days of personal service when smiling, neatly uniformed attendants pumped gas, checked the oil, and hand-washed your windshield. These are the same people who recall the local five-and-dime, where a corps of quiet, unassuming sales clerks waited patiently behind counters. Only those who have passed the half-century mark can recall the day they turned 18 and went down to the local bank with mom and dad to meet the bank president, who personally opened that first checking account.
Help was plentiful because labor costs were low, making it possible to render a level of service that was solicitous-often almost patronizing. It can still be found in certain upscale shops, many country clubs, some law firms, exclusive restaurants, and other venues catering to the wealthy.
But is this what customers are looking for today? Is this the customer service model for the new century? Today, the force redefining customer service is the Internet: the one realm where direct human contact is absent.
The president of a large New England-based residential real estate organization commented in a trade journal op-ed piece that real estate agents are valuable because real estate is a personal business. 'We realtors believe that there's no substitute for actually touching and feeling a home or dealing face to face,' he said. The thought is interesting, but only because it's quaint and out of sync with perceived reality.
In effect, his plea lies at the heart of the customer service issue, having to do with the control of home listing data. If real estate salespeople lose control of data to the Internet, the personal quality is threatened. This executive was really saying that unless the real estate industry maintains a tight control on information, sales agents could become an endangered species.
But what the real estate industry thinks about the relationship between buyer, seller, and home has become irrelevant. Ever so rapidly, the Internet is quickly moving customers away from personal service and toward personalized service.
The real estate executive isn't alone in his thinking; he's only expressing the pain that others feel. Customers are now 'going around' (another term for 'avoiding') intermediaries far more frequently than ever, and this is only the beginning. The Internet is the new marketplace because it defines how customers want to be served-what personalized service means.
Customers want what they want when they want it the way they want it, contends Procter & Gamble Senior Vice President of Public Affairs Charlotte Otto. Meeting this list of demands is personalized service, and its focus is the customer. Why are the major newspapers offering online editions? The Internet has totally freed readers from having to hold something in their hands to possess it. You need news but only the news you want, and today you don't need a stack of newsprint to get it. Best of all, you have your news whenever and wherever you want. Once you're finished, you can go on to something else or instantly research a particular subject. It all happens in real time.
Personal service is qualitatively different. It emanates not from the customer, but from the service provider. In other words, if you as the insurance agent, banker, or merchant can 'take care of a customer,' you will have that customer's business. In real estate (or any other field), the customer must coordinate with, depend on, and interact with a sales agent who pulls together various parties. For more and more consumers, this is becoming painfully awkward, even though efforts are being made to streamline and improve the process. The personal service process fails to work for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the customer's dependence on the one who delivers the service.
On the other hand, the Internet's power lies in consumer independence. At any time, you can look up a book you're interested in, compare it with other books on the same subject, read the first chapter, and place your order without getting out of your chair. Using the Internet, you can do your banking, trade stock, arrange a vacation, or conduct business transactions.
Closely related to personalized service is the customer loyalty issue. As Wendy Liebmann, president of WSL Strategic Retail, suggests, 'The 'loyalty connection' is no longer personal.' If personal service has given way to personalized service, loyalty that once arose from a personal relationship has been replaced by 'practicality, efficiency and expediency.' This redefinition of loyalty underscores the importance of salespeople establishing their value in terms of knowledge and expertise, rather than personal relationships.
It's clear that as the demand for personalized service increases, customers will have less interest in personal service. The challenge is discovering ways to personalize personal service. Otto makes this point when she calls tomorrow's customers 'professional consumers who expect to be in control. Because these consumers will come from every part of the world, they'll expect to reach you 24 hours a day. They'll expect you to speak their language. They'll expect truly personalized service.' The qualities of personalized service are easy to understand but far more difficult to bring about because expectations continue to change. Here are guidelines for creating personalized service:
Personalized service focuses on individual customer behavior. Companies with mission statements don't understand personalized service because mission statements are about companies, not customers (even though every mission statement includes the phrase 'our customers come first'). Personalized service asks what the individual customer wants and delivers it. It doesn't make assumptions about what the customer may want. Web browsers, for example, offer their customers an endless array of personalized news, stock market information, weather data, and just about anything else.
Personalized service is relentless in making improvements. Personalized service isn't about getting it right. The traditional business approach is to invest time, energy, and capital in getting systems (including people) in place so the operation will run smoothly in the delivery of products or services. Personalized service is revolutionary because it's based on a different premise: The only way to be totally focused on the individual customer is electronically. For example, the America Online of today is a different product than it was in December 1996. Even though it had attracted more than 10 million subscribers at that time, it was awkward, slow, and limited in its offerings. Changes in America Online can't be measured in 'generations' because it's continuous. Compare this to the average company Web site; many are the same as the day they went online.
National University in San Diego understands the continuous improvement issue. It's the first to offer a master's degree in 'E-commerce.' Since knowledge in this field is constantly evolving, the school plans to overhaul the program every six months. Compare this to traditional college programs.
Personalized service aims at total efficiency. Efficiency is about saving time, providing convenience, and most important, promoting individuality. You can design your own computer on the Internet without talking to anyone. You build it to your personal specifications with user-friendly, easily accessible information provided by the manufacturer. It's in the manufacturer's self-interest to be helpful and accurate. You get what you want when you want it the way you want it. This is total efficiency. And almost always, it's provided electronically.
Personalized service changes customer expectations. Because customers are in control, they no longer take 'no' for an answer. Every business is experiencing demands for shorter and shorter turnaround times, highly customized services, and the exact solutions customers want. Long bound by decades and even centuries of tradition, even the wedding ceremony is changing to meet customer demands for personalized service. The New York Times reported that 27 guests gathered to celebrate the marriage of Victoria Dunn and Terrance Jones, both 51. No big deal? Seven were in a New York City Kinko's print and copy shop videoconferencing room and the others were at Kinko's locations in Portland, OR, Seattle, and Berkeley, CA. The 'best woman' spoke from Seattle and the ring bearers pretended to deliver the rings from Portland. Experiences like this, chat rooms, E-mail, and wireless communications influence and shape customer expectations.
Personalized service is the wave of the future and far more democratic than the service of yesterday. In the 1950s, marketers talked about the idea that 'the customer is king.' It has taken until now for the concept to become reality. Manufacturing millions of washers, dryers, cars, refrigerators, and toasters can't compare to getting customers the one they want, when, where and the way they want it. In reality, the survival of every company depends on personalized service.