What Extreme Client Care Isn’t

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Recently I was interviewed on the subject of Extreme Client Care™ for a book and we spent most of that call on what it is and how business owners can easily and inexpensively incorporate it into everything they do.

What we didn’t really cover and what’s hit home for me over the last week is what it’s not.  A couple of examples to illustrate what I mean:

A tale of two banks

I have accounts at two different banks and 99% of the time finds me at their drive-thrus.  Bank 1 greeted me, commented on the nice weather, cashed my check, gave me a butterscotch candy, dog biscuit (note that I didn’t have any of the dogs with me this trip) and thanked me for choosing them.

As I was thinking about the great service from Bank 1, I drove to Bank 2 to deposit cash.  The teller also greeted me, in a way which made it clear she didn’t really care whether I answered the question or not and in a way which made me wonder if someone was threatening her if she didn’t spit out the requisite phrase.

Thinking this may be a fluke, after all, we all have off days, I repeated the above 3 more times in the same week with the exact same experience.

Both banks “did their job” — the technical aspects of what they did was flawless, yet only Bank 1 practiced Extreme Client Care™.

Dinner out

After a busy day in the office, we decided to go out for dinner.  Not a super expensive place, but not fast food either.  The goal was to have a delicious meal prepared, put in front of us and taken away with no clean-up (ever had one of those days?).

Our server was incredibly friendly.  She couldn’t have been nicer.  Score 1 for Extreme Client Care™.

Sadly, that’s the only point.  She messed up my beverage order, then forgot to fix it, told DH the wrong vegetable side and didn’t catch it until he asked where his “proper” side was and completely messed up his other side by bringing the wrong dish.

In this case, the “service” in terms of her friendliness was perfect, yet the technical aspects of her job were severely lacking and so the restaurant fails, in this instance, in practicing Extreme Client Care™.

As I was sharing this experience with my sister, she had a very similar experience at the same restaurant about a week after we went.  Once, a fluke.  Twice, the beginnings of a trend.

MY REQUEST TO YOU  

Extreme Client Care™ isn’t just about being nice and friendly or doing your job well.  It’s about both.

You want to relate to your clients and customers as people while doing a great job.  One without the other creates an experience of lacking.  Something’s missing.

It’s almost worse to have one without the other as the one which is *on* calls more attention to the one which isn’t.  The contrast becomes stark.

What are you doing to ensure your business reflects the tenets of Extreme Client Care™ — service and skill?