Every business is in the business of customer service.
The customer isn’t always right, but it would be almost impossible to overstate how important customer service is to your business.
What does your customer want?
On the one hand, they want the principle of least astonishment. If you run a $$$$ restaurant with linen tablecloths, you shouldn’t serve your wine in pink plastic kids’ cups, and you shouldn’t ignore them for 90 minutes. Your customers have some expectations of the environment you will provide.
But on the other hand, they want to be delighted. To delight them, you may indeed wish to astonish them. It’s all about the axis on which you choose to astonish.
The magic of competing in your marketplace is to know which axes require least astonishment and which axes are ripe for astonishment. This rings true whether you’re a restaurant, tire installer, accounting firm, or software company.
You should know which is which.
