What do customers want, anyway?

What Do Customers Want, Anyway?
Have you ever had customers who want the universe, gift-wrapped and delivered yesterday? Was that a resounding YES I heard?
Fortunately, most customers don't demandthe impossible. In fact, what they want is exceedingly reasonable. And what's that? Well, switch for a moment from your service provider hat to your customer hat. When you're a customer, what mattersto you? What matters when you're at the car dealer, the doctor's office, or the airport? What matters to you when you're on the phone ordering flowers, or awaiting technical support, or ordering amillion-calorie pizza and a zero-calorie beverage?
Over the years, I've asked many hundreds of participants in my customer service seminars what matters to them when they're the customer. Theirresponses are overwhelmingly similar, demonstrating that most of us want the same things when we are customers: We want to be treated with respect. We want to be listened to. We don't want to be bouncedaround or ignored or treated like dummies.
Product and process
Now, switch back to your service provider hat and think about it: Both the product and the process are important to customers. Theproduct refers to the solution, system, response, resolution, deliverable or result. Whatever form the product takes, customers want it to work properly, to meet their needs, and to have that elusivequality of, well, quality. This is the technical element of service, and you're not likely to have happy customers without it.
But excelling in the technical element alone may not keep customers comingback unless you also attend to the process. In fact, for many customers, the process is more important than the product. The process concerns how customers feel they've been treated. This is the humanelement of service. And touchy-feely though it may appear, the human element is exceedingly important in achieving a high level of customer satisfaction.
The following list presents the some of the...