We were recently enjoying a cruise-- yes, we like to cruise about four times a year-- and something that occurred made me think of the necessity of an organization to verify that every employee is trained and is following through with the customer service level you want to offer.
What happened was this: My wife and I like a dessert called “White and Dark Chocolate.” This cruise line once offered this dessert almost every day, but then got away from it. Even though it is popular, it might only be featured once, or maybe not at all, in any given cruise.
We decided that the best thing to do would be to make it known that we miss this dessert. The pastry department representative on duty said that he would do his best to have it available for us. We asked the lead pastry chef about it and he said that what we had been told was not true. He said that although our favorite dessert might appear on the schedule as a featured item, it could be replaced with something else.
Later in the evening, we asked our maitre’d about it. He knew what the dessert was and said it would be delivered to our room and put in the refrigerator every night until the end of the cruise. “I will take care of you. Don’t worry about it. “ Sure enough—that night we had the delicious dessert in our refrigerator just as he said. Not only that. He had a message in our cabin telling us our favorite dessert was in our cabin refrigerator.
We looked for a comment card to commend him for going above and beyond.
The CSD (customer service disconnect) is that you can’t have one employee who is ready to go above and beyond, yet another who feels their hands are tied. It does not send a consistent message to your customers.
ACTION STEPS FOR THIS WEEK
- Which or your employees goes above and beyond for prospects and customers every time/
- Which ones don’t do that?
- What are the reasons that they don’t do that?
- Is there training you should offer to get that?
- If training doesn’t help, should you part with those employees to find the right ones for your culture?
