Scott Nelson

I recently took one of those customer service surveys that businesses give you sometimes. This one was from a casual dining restaurant. It asked all the normal questions, such as “how was the food?”, “was the wait staff courteous?”, “how long did you have to wait?”  They also had a few odd ones, such as “were the dishes clean?” (I would hope so), and “Did the food look appealing?” (again, I hope so).

But the last question caught my eye. It asked, simply, “Are you happy with this experience?” I stopped and thought about that. Was I happy? Yes, I guess I was. But they didn’t ask the important question…could I have been happier?

In my case, yes I could have been. The music from overhead was unusually loud (no, I am not getting old…).  The waitress was good, but could have been better. Parking was a major problem. There were a few other things. Nothing was terrible. But, if they want to know about happy, they aren’t going to improve by asking only if I was happy with the experience. That covers the basics like washing the dishes and having the food taste good. They need to go to the next level and ask what they could do to make me happier.

This is probably true in much of life. In personal relationships, we would do well to ask “what can I do to make you happier”, rather then ask “are you happy.” Or at work. At review time, asking our bosses what we can do to make them happier with our performance (hint to people whom I review…). But when it comes to customer service and CRM, this could really be big.

What can our firms start doing to make our customers happier?

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Category: CRM Strategy Customer Service     Tags:

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