Service

All businesses today are service businesses. The product is a part of the experience.

A problem in a customer relationship often contains the opportunity to deliver outstanding service to rebuild the relationship and possibly enhance it. As long as the situation is not created due to negligence or apathy most customers are generous enough to forgive an error as long as they perceive the individual / company to be genuine in their remorse and efforts to make amends .

Yet , companies routinely allow a bad situation to become worse by :

- doing nothing
- issuing verbal apologies and doing nothing to remedy the problem
- making lame attempts to rationalize the problem
- seeming to be in some degree of denial about the extent of the problem
- hoping that mere passage of time will induce amnesia in the customer about the incident.

I'm fascinated at how some companies just flounder in the face of a problem - at times compromising a relationship that has taken years to build.

The obscure we eventually see. The completely obvious it seems takes much longer.