Have you noticed that we’re living in an era of activism? There’s a new generation of individuals in town and they are not prepared to swallow what they believe that they should be spitting out. As a result, we’re seeing an upsurge in various movements promoting causes that individuals believe are worthwhile. Think climate change, ecological preservation, sustainable living, gender discrimination, workplace inclusivity and the like.
Service excellence activism is the sustained push on the part of the customer, to pressure businesses to deliver the highest quality of customer experience. The critical difference about activism in this era, is the ease with which the various movements can gain traction and gather steam, by tapping in to multiple social channels that are tailor-made to deliver mass messages, easily and quickly.
Service excellence activism is the sustained push on the part of the customer, to pressure businesses to deliver the highest quality of customer experience.
There’s also a difference in the social persona of this new generation of individuals. This persona shows up with an unwillingness to accept experiences that create psychological discomfort and with a “stand your ground” style.
Whilst the maturation of customer behaviour is here to stay, in some business environments it has been easy to miss, because its progress has been more incremental than exponential.
What has become hard to miss though, is the steady escalation of the voice of dissatisfaction with service delivery in almost every business sector. Now, whilst overall, service delivery is far better than let’s say, ten years ago, let’s remember that the more customers receive by way of service excellence, the more they want. In other words, their expectations rise proportionally to the escalation in service delivery. Talk about a no-win situation.
To the businesses that have been watchful, service activism is regarded as both a threat to not be ignored and an opportunity to be embraced.
To the businesses that have been watchful, service activism is regarded as both a threat to not be ignored and an opportunity to be embraced.
A threat because activism can shame brands publicly, by spotlighting existing service weaknesses and on the other hand, can repel complacency and push the business to remain responsive to the shifting nature of customer expectations. Viewing service activism as an opportunity, is beneficial to a business in several ways.
Firstly, service activism pushes businesses to be ever mindful of the danger of living in a status quo existence, where the price of service stagnation is slow death, through customer churn and attrition.
Next, the onboarding of customers takes on a very different meaning and becomes a high-level ritual, to businesses that focus on the mining the opportunity. First-time customers are welcomed in a grand way, similar to the way in which students at certain colleges and universities are inducted, ceremoniously, into their respective fraternities and sororities.
Customers love it when a brand publicly champions a worthy cause and a brand that espouses service evangelism, builds significant currency with its customers.
Whilst this ritualistic appreciation of the customer at the outset delivers an awesome experience that becomes a magical deposit into the customer’s memory bank, there’s another huge benefit. It’s setting the platform for building a customer relationship that connects his or her lifetime value, to the revenue stream of the business.
Notwithstanding the fact that many businesses acknowledge the financial benefits associated with customer lifetime value, it’s not applied generally, as a “working formula” for cutting customer acquisition costs or driving repeat business. Except in the case of those opportunistic businesses that operate ahead of the service activism wave.
A third and very important benefit of subscribing to the power of service excellence activism, is the building of customer trust when the business brand aligns with service evangelists who support activism. Customers love it when a brand publicly champions a worthy cause and a brand that espouses service evangelism, builds significant currency with its customers.
So, what do we need to remember about service excellence activism? It rises when service delivery is weak and falls when customer experience peaks.
The wisdom in this partnership is that when a business and its customers are both service evangelists and espouse the tenets of customer experience excellence, the need for service excellence activism wanes. Who wants to picket and protest against a business that’s delivering on its promises to its customers? Certainly not the customers who are beneficiaries of high standards of service delivery and who are experiencing happiness during every transaction and interaction with the business brand.
So, what do we need to remember about service excellence activism? It rises when service delivery is weak and falls when customer experience peaks.
To my mind therefore, one of the most effective formulas that a business can utilize to manage service activism, is to do whatever is necessary to pre-empt the need for its existence in the first place.
Simply put, this means creating a service-dominant ecosystem, with a single vision for delivering customer happiness as a daily priority.