Moment of Truth or Moment of Impact?
Moments
of truth
are all those times when customers experience and evaluate
your service. Work hard, do a good job, and customers
will come back for more.
Moments of impact are those rare moments when
someone goes way above the call of duty, stretches the
envelope far beyond the stamp, innovates and takes action
in unexpected ways that are valued, appreciated…and
remembered.
A client at a seminar handed me this note: ‘Last
night, 10 minutes before departure at the airport, I
found my car and house keys still with me, which means
my wife would have been locked out of the house. I passed
them to the Singapore Airlines in-flight supervisor
and they managed to get the keys to her within the hour!’
This is a great moment of impact. If the airline was
only in the business of flying passengers from city
to city, they would miss the opportunity to impact
this customer for life.
A client of Citibank was delayed for four hours overseas.
He called the local Citiphone office at 2:00 am and
asked them to call his wife six hours later…by
which time she would be awake, but he would be 37,000
feet up in the air. The bankers made the call, and made
the impact.
Key Learning Point
Moments of impact
do more than just surprise your customers: they deepen
the relationship, extend goodwill, increase tolerance
of any future problems and build loyalty far into the
future.
Action
Steps
The next time your
customer needs assistance that’s outside your normal
course of work, make the decision, make the effort –
make the impact.
Next Article in Customer Service Perception Points >>
Give Yourself a Vigorous Visual Audit
First Article in Customer Service Recovery >>
What to do When Your Customer is About to Explode
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Ron Kaufman is an internationally acclaimed customer service training educator for quality service.
He is author of the bestselling series "UP Your Service!" and founder of
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