Customer Service Fundamentals Part IV - Managing Expectations

I have previously written about our first three Customer Service Fundamentals - the posts can be found here.

Today I'm writing about our fourth customer service fundamental:

Understand, Manage, and Where Possible, Exceed Expectations.

I started writing this about a week ago and came up with a decent enough, though somewhat plain, and fairly predictable entry. Since I knew what I had written didn't fully capture the essence of how we truly go above & beyond for our customers, I decided to ask everyone at DMC for ways that we follow this customer service fundamental.

Below are just some of the dozens of responses I received:

• When making decisions we constantly ask ourselves “What’s best for the customer?”
• We don’t assume. We take the time to ask the customer what they want
• We think beyond the current specifications to design systems are flexible, expandable, and modular
• Our vast history/diversity of projects and clients gives us foresight and allows us to be one step ahead where possible
• Open communication and a community of support and willingness to pitch in all helps to make sure that an engineer will always be available.
• By building rapport and relationships with each individual client our solutions can be custom tailored to their specific individual needs.
• Exceeding expectations is embodied partially by our “if it is within reason, make it happen” statement.
• Communicate to the customer with the appropriate frequency and level of detail. This varies from customer to customer based on what they want
• We work within our expertise to deliver what the customer needs and expect. We do not try sell our customers on what they do not need.
• Sounds cliché, but go the extra mile. Get on the floor and finish that wiring job for the guy. On the way to the hotel, stop at Walmart and get a longer network cable for them. Make things as easy for them as possible. FedEX a CD if the internet just won’t work for him today. All that difficult, risky stuff identified before and within the proposal… just make it happen.
• If there are any red flags that can hinder a project, we attack them first and make customers aware of it.

• We make a point of openly receiving any constructive/reasonable criticism from customers, taking their comments seriously, and actively identifying what improvements can be made - we directly seek out such criticism when asking "what could have made us a <given score + 1>" during Ultimate Questions. Thus, if we ever don't fully meet expectations, we make sure we accurately understand why so we can meet/exceed them in the future.

The common thread here is open and continuous communication.