Achieving Extraordinary Customer Service Experience thru Focus on Job Essence

In his book, Delight Your Customers, author Steve Curtin talks about the importance of "job essence" in providing an exceptional and/or extraordinary customer service experience.

He spoke at CX Week this week and provided a great summary as to why customer service is so predictably poor? He stated simply, "because it is voluntary".  How spot on is that?

Employees as you know are on the frontline of delivering or not delivering on your brand promise. If all employees do is perform in relation to the routine duties and tasks of the job (what they are paid to do), the job function, they will miss out on the those "moments" where they have the opportunity to surprise or delight their customers.

Curtin states that the easiest and most effective starting point for improving customer service and experience is by inviting your employees into a conversation about "job essence". How do you do that?, he states you start by asking each and every employee, individually, "from your perspective, what does your job entail"? He notes that more often than not an employees' response to this question will be focused on specific duties and tasks, their job function. This provides the context and opportunity to begin a dialogue about job essence vs. job function with your employees. To completely change the context by which an employee measures and assesses themselves and their job performance.

According to Curtin, the companies whom are most successful in delivering a consistent, reliable, and exceptional customer experience, "figure out how to best incorporate job essence into job function, so that it occurs reliably, over time, by design, rather than inconsistently, here and there, by chance."

For customer service, according to Curtin, "is a voluntary act that demonstrates a genuine desire to satisfy if not delight a customer". It takes discretionary effort or initiative on behalf of an employee to deliver an exceptional or even extraordinary service experience.

Companies whom delivery exception customers experiences hire for it, educate for it, train and mentor on it, and measure it. Think about companies like Disney (Where Dreams Come True), L.L. Bean (Treat Your Customers Like Human Beings), Ritz Carlton (We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen), and Zappos (Delivery WOW thru Service).