Why good service design doesn’t guarantee loyal customers

Access, quality and values. Get it to people, be reliable, make it something people believe in.

Three factors, greater than the sum of their parts — easy to remember, sure, but tricky to execute in full. I help businesses get under the skin of what their customers need — identifying the barriers and the simple to radical solutions needed to overcome them, from new products, technologies, business models, communications to organizational change. But whatever the issue, whatever the industry, the same patterns arise and it appears to boil down to three key barriers:

1. Access. “You’re out of mind, sight or my reach.”

For a range of reasons, your customer just isn’t able to get to you — price point, technology limitations, physical availability or maybe you’re just not top of mind.

2. Quality. “I can’t rely on you — your service is sometimes just plain bad.”

Most obviously, your product or service just doesn’t understand what your customer needs (perhaps not even understanding who your customer really is) and therefore the features are not designed to meet their needs and expectations.

3. Values. “I don’t believe in what you stand for — I can’t trust you.”

Values are expressed in a person’s behaviour and actions. The barrier here is that you do not operate with any significant values, you’re targeting the wrong customers with the wrong values or the way you act contradicts with the the values you supposedly believe in (killing trust).

Deliver one and two, and you have a happy customer — one that is likely to come back again. But layer in number three and you have not just repeat customers, but loyal customers — ones who not only believe in your products but your business’s wider ambitions. You and your customers are now partners in the success of your business and together you’re driving towards shared goals.

People love what makes you unique

Often (especially in the practice of service design), we focus purely on the first two — access and quality, and this makes sense to a point. If we break down all of the highs and lows of the customer journey, the roots of the lows are often access and quality related. But when we look at the highs, when we investigate the touchpoints in the journey that don’t just satisfy, but excite people, we find that these are points where the business is acting in a way that demonstrates their unique values — the points that people love.

Let’s look at an abstracted customer journey. Company A and B target the same group of people. Both understand what their customers need, and by no small feat, they have shipped a product with the right features to deliver a satisfying customer journey. If companies assess themselves against only functional needs, this does the job, sure, but as a user I’ll switch between these two companies as and when I like. Let’s layer in some character…

Company C is also targeting the same group, but recognizes and represents what you believe in — it has goals you agree with, is inspirational and aspirational. Shared values dials it up a notch and differentiates the experience. Something interesting happens here too — like a person, a business’s values shape the way they act. No person is perfect or universally liked by everyone — often we’re willing to forgive some of their faults because of the size of their strengths so some of the downs in the experience may become forgivable because of the sizes of the ups.

Every action risks breaking trust

Now, Company C has a strong position but one that becomes hard for most businesses to effectively implement, let alone maintain as they grow in size. The way they act, the things they say, the public choices the business makes and the things their employees do, are all actions that should demonstrate their values.

Think values > behaviours > actions. ‘I value honesty > therefore I always tell the truth > therefore I owned up when I spilt something on the carpet.’

‘We value authenticity > therefore we only use British seasonal ingredients > therefore we make our winter soup recipe with 100% local ingredients.’

‘We value loyalty > therefore we always recognise our long-term customers > therefore every year we reward customers with a free 50% discount.’

For more inspiration, check out examples of core values.

Even small actions ladder back to our core values and therefore we expect reliable actions — we’ve all experienced the moment when someone we trust does something we didn’t expect of them and it leads us to question them as a person. The same recipe applies to businesses.

The greater the number of touchpoints, the higher the number of employees, the more vendors, the more detached those teams become from the core purpose of the business, the higher the risk of misstepping. This is where the strength of a company’s culture becomes so critical.

Recognise the difference between the three

Poor access, poor quality or misaligned values. When diagnosing the challenges within your business, the feedback from and behaviours of your customers, remember to classify the difference between these three types of barriers. The way in which you react may not just represent a product feature that ticks the box or not, but be the step that makes or breaks your customer’s belief in your business.