Legendary Service summary

We all value good customer service. Yet simply instructing your staff to “be friendly” to customers isn’t enough.

The truth is, you have to genuinely care about your customers’ needs to keep them coming back – and for that, you need a real service strategy. In other words, you need legendary service, which at its core is about building relationships that promote business success.

There are two kinds of relationships involved in legendary service. The first is the relationship you have with your employees, or your internal customers.

This is important! If your people feel valued, they’ll enjoy coming to work and they’ll share this positive attitude with customers. Thus managers need to create an environment that motivates.

The second relationship is with your external customers. This is where legendary service is crucial. You want to deliver the kind of service that’s so consistent and smooth that customers will return to you, instead of seeking out a competitor.

Neglecting legendary service and letting bad service be the norm can have dire consequences for a business. Kelsey, a university student working in a discount store, learned this firsthand.

One day at work, a customer asked to return a defective coffeemaker. The customer unfortunately couldn’t find the original receipt; and although Kelsey wanted to help the customer and accept the broken item, her manager refused to accept a return on a used item without a receipt.

The customer protested and then left angrily, never to return. Kelsey was frustrated that she couldn’t help the customer, and ultimately, this experience diminished Kelsey’s work satisfaction. She had to drag herself to her next shift, the previous day’s unpleasantness still in her mind.

To avoid scenarios such as these, managers and business owners should follow the ICARE model. We’ll explore this model in the following blinks.