What is Great Service?

Measuring public service for excellence can provide a benchmark for client relationship.

It would seem that the concept of great service would be a household word that carries with it a single commonly understood meaning. But there are probably as many ideas to describe great service as there are clients who experience it.  Still there are a few ideas that transcend industry sector, size of company, geography or types of products and services provided.

The research by Berry, Parasuraman & Zeithaml (1994), although nearly 20 years old, is still a great yardstick for measuring service excellence.  They suggested ten lessons learned from their ten-year (cross-industry) longitudinal study of service in American-based companies. 

Lesson One:  The first lesson they declare is the ability to listen (really listen) to the customer.  Understand fully what the customer is telling you; how they’re telling you and why they’re telling you. 

Lesson Two: Provide a reliable set of products and services.  Five criteria used to evaluate service excellence, including dependability, responsiveness, knowledge and expertise, empathy and appearance. 

Lesson Three: Basic Service is not fancy; it’s just demonstrated accountability, and ownership. 

Lesson Four: Service design, equipment, service personnel, service system and service environment (appearance, cleanliness, supplies, location, etc.)

Lesson Five:  Recovery or response time, time to correct and satisfaction with the correction. 

Lesson Six: Surprise the customer. Go beyond expectations with exceptional speed of delivery or repair, outstanding courtesy, over-the-top commitment to resolve an issue.

Lesson Seven: Fair play. Just do the right thing for the right reasons.  Demonstrate fairness even when it doesn’t play to your financial advantage. 

Lesson Eight: Teamwork.  Let the client see you working together.  Never sell out another team member. Rush to the aid of a team member in order to impress the client.

Lesson Nine: Build strong internal service.  External service is heightened when internal service excellence is realized. Listen to each other and respond to each other’s needs.  Like other important values, service begins at home.

Lesson Ten: Encourage leadership service. When leaders exemplify a service mentality toward their followers, the followers will likely deploy the same style of service toward their clients. 

Ten Lessons of Service Success – Research Results from         Berry, Parasuraman & Zeithml (1994) p. 32-42