I know I bang on about the importance of consistency in delivering world class customer service… and the reason that I do bang on about it is that FAILURE to deliver occurs when we have inconsistency.

Whether we’re talking about a business delivering great customer service, or whether we’re talking about a rugby league team having a rock-solid water-tight defensive line, when we lose our consistency and our dedication and responsibility to ourselves, to our teammates and to our employer, this is when the cracks appear in our processes and systems, and eventually leads to everything falling down like a house of cards….

And it all happens because of individuals taking short cuts, or failing to do the work required to ensure that the desired processes are executed to their one hundred percent maximum…

When one team member drops the ball, and short cuts, it sends a message to all team members that the first team member doing this believes that the shortcut is OK, and believes that shortcutting something does not have a deleterious effect on anything else that the organisation, and the team, are trying hard to achieve.

And yet it does…

And yet it does.

What begins as a dripping tap, when left unchecked, eventually results in a torrent of water occurring on another day in the future.

And when that day in the future happens, where the whole system suffers a meltdown, often the team and the organisation fail to realise where and when exactly things started to go south…

Being able to spot the breaches as they happen rather than learning from hindsight is a key factor that distinguishes the great organisations from the good, and from the not so good.

A great organisation understands that inconsistencies in the delivery of processes will always arise.

That’s a given.

It’s a fact of life.

It’s being able to identify these inconsistencies as immediately as they arise, and to rectify and repair those defects immediately, and hopefully permanently so that they do not recur, is what really makes the great organisations truly world class.

Leadership within these organisations must be committed to excellence, and be committed to not tolerating the mediocre, and the ordinary.

When your business is known for always delivering excellence, that’s far better than being known for sometimes delivering excellence.

Because when your business delivers excellence sometimes, or irregularly, or occasionally, what that means is that it also delivers disappointment to its customers sometimes, or irregularly, or occasionally.

And that’s a big fail in my book.

In dental…

There’s no point in having only some of your team answering the phone correctly…

There’s no point in having only some of your team greeting the arriving patient correctly…

There’s no point in having only some of your team collecting the next patient from the client lounge correctly…

There’s no point in only some of your team doing THE ULTIMATE PATIENT HANDOVERTM correctly….

There’s no point in sneaking a quick look at your mobile phone some of the time while you’re at work when your boss, your teammates and your customers expect you not to be doing this…

Because sometimes is never good enough.

Everything needs to be done correctly all of the time.

There are no silver medals or participation awards in the delivery of World Class Customer Service…

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Dr. David Moffet BDS FPFA CSP is a certified CX Experience coach. David works with his wife Jayne Bandy to help SME businesses improve their Customer Service Systems to create memorable World Class experiences for their valued clients and customers. Click here to find out how David and Jayne can help your business