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Making an extra effort for customer satisfaction
By Tseng Tan |
November 26, 2012, Monday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IT was Sunday night, the seventh day after my successful quadruple bypass heart surgery in November 2008.
The next day, I would be discharged. It was 9.30pm and I was about to fall asleep. Then I noticed a shadow looming in front of the bed, near my feet.
I opened my eyes and saw my heart surgeon D. Wu smiling at me. "How are you?" he asked.
I was surprised to see him.
On Friday, he had informed me that during the weekend, he would be in Brunei to handle medical cases. Meanwhile his partner, Dr Sheares, would be attending to me, which he did.
I asked, "Why are you here?"
"I was just on my way from the airport, so I dropped by to see my patient before going home."
I was immensely touched and the next morning, he came before 9am to approve my discharge. I later asked his personal assistant, a nurse, why the eminent doctor should visit me when he would be seeing me the next day. She told me that was the routine for the well-known doctor.
Here is an example of an individual following the "We try harder" (a slogan of Avis car rentals for 50 years, discarded recently) approach in medicine as well as business.
Trying harder
Organizations that provide products and services can also ensure that their products and services continue to please customers by "trying harder" and exceeding the expectations of their customers.
First, because of the enormous speed of information sharing in business, competitors soon will nibble for a piece of the market share, even if the organization has a first-mover advantage.
So to keep customers coming back, it is necessary to ensure that products and services continue to delight or "wow" its customers.
Second, one pre-Internet age estimate that one unhappy customer will inform 10 others no longer applies, since the damage could be disastrous and widespread. Instances of substandard products and services are now disseminated across the globe through the Internet, reaching millions of informed "netizens."
Yet, it is disappointing to read in Shanghai Daily many instances of malpractices - recycled soups in hot pot restaurants, fake soy sauce, fake eggs, chemically treated chopsticks disguised as bamboo shoots, adulterated food and medical products and touts hurting tourists in famous shopping centers - endless.
As I ruminated on the above cases while sitting in a local (Japanese cuisine, Singapore-owned chain) restaurant waiting for my order to be served, I noticed the colorful paper table mat in front of me. It proclaimed in no uncertain terms the following:
1.We provide food samples every two weeks for bacteria count testing by authorities. 2.We visit suppliers to ensure safety of the ingredients we use. 3.We serve only what we eat.
Now you know why I am a frequent visitor to this restaurant.
The author is a senior HR consultant in Singapore. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.
The next day, I would be discharged. It was 9.30pm and I was about to fall asleep. Then I noticed a shadow looming in front of the bed, near my feet.
I opened my eyes and saw my heart surgeon D. Wu smiling at me. "How are you?" he asked.
I was surprised to see him.
On Friday, he had informed me that during the weekend, he would be in Brunei to handle medical cases. Meanwhile his partner, Dr Sheares, would be attending to me, which he did.
I asked, "Why are you here?"
"I was just on my way from the airport, so I dropped by to see my patient before going home."
I was immensely touched and the next morning, he came before 9am to approve my discharge. I later asked his personal assistant, a nurse, why the eminent doctor should visit me when he would be seeing me the next day. She told me that was the routine for the well-known doctor.
Here is an example of an individual following the "We try harder" (a slogan of Avis car rentals for 50 years, discarded recently) approach in medicine as well as business.
Trying harder
Organizations that provide products and services can also ensure that their products and services continue to please customers by "trying harder" and exceeding the expectations of their customers.
First, because of the enormous speed of information sharing in business, competitors soon will nibble for a piece of the market share, even if the organization has a first-mover advantage.
So to keep customers coming back, it is necessary to ensure that products and services continue to delight or "wow" its customers.
Second, one pre-Internet age estimate that one unhappy customer will inform 10 others no longer applies, since the damage could be disastrous and widespread. Instances of substandard products and services are now disseminated across the globe through the Internet, reaching millions of informed "netizens."
Yet, it is disappointing to read in Shanghai Daily many instances of malpractices - recycled soups in hot pot restaurants, fake soy sauce, fake eggs, chemically treated chopsticks disguised as bamboo shoots, adulterated food and medical products and touts hurting tourists in famous shopping centers - endless.
As I ruminated on the above cases while sitting in a local (Japanese cuisine, Singapore-owned chain) restaurant waiting for my order to be served, I noticed the colorful paper table mat in front of me. It proclaimed in no uncertain terms the following:
1.We provide food samples every two weeks for bacteria count testing by authorities. 2.We visit suppliers to ensure safety of the ingredients we use. 3.We serve only what we eat.
Now you know why I am a frequent visitor to this restaurant.
The author is a senior HR consultant in Singapore. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.
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