Surprising services

Surprising services are something extraordinary that only you provide. A service provider that is among the first to pioneer a service standard brings delight to customers.

What are the benefits of having delighted customers? They include loyalty, positive word of mouth and increased purchases, leading to greater profit, rewards for staff, etc. The benefits of delighting customers go on and on. In the context of delighting customers, satisfied customers are not necessarily loyal customers, because they can attain their satisfaction elsewhere. Conversely, delighted customers re loyal customers.

Despite such a list of benefits awaiting organisations that delight customers, surprising services are not consistently demonstrated by most organisations over time, as they lose focus on delighting customers. They lose touch of engaging what is changing in the environment, what is changing with customers' expectations and what is changing in the activities of their competitors and in technology. Given the intense competition in most industries, industry players tend to emulate each other as they compete for the market share.

As per the figure above, the inner circle represents expected or basic services, which competitors will contribute to provide to the marketplaces in their respective product categories. If there are more players within the smaller circle providing the expected services, soon they will just compete among themselves on pricing. In order for organisations to delight customers, there is a need to expand the circle. In order for customers to receive more than just basic services, we need to expand the boundary with innovative products and service offerings, as represented by the outer circle services.

The outer circle services are also known as surprising services, because they take the lead over the competition, being the first offerings in the marketplace to delight customers. Thus, surprising services will achieve their purpose in delighting customers and in doing so, will differentiate themselves from expected services.

Companies that provide surprising services will continue to lead the pack in how they serve customers by keeping them happy beyond contentment - delighting and surprising them by providing such positive experiences that customers will have much to share with friends, colleagues and people in their social networks.

Real Service Providers provide surprising services to lead the pack in how they serve customers.