Consistency beats occasional brilliance in creating loyal customers
Customers don’t average your service; they remember the best and the worst. The distance between those two is the experience gap. A single brilliant moment can’t make up for a sloppy follow‑up. Likewise, a calm, consistent process can beat a few dazzling hero moves done by one star employee.
Shrinking the gap isn’t about scripts for everything. It’s about stabilizing beginnings and endings, then giving teams room to add their personality in the middle. A small café can’t control every rush, but it can make sure every customer hears a name greeting and gets a clean goodbye. A clinic can’t eliminate all delays, but it can promise a check‑in within five minutes and send a simple “here’s what happens next” after each visit.
When teams set a floor and ceiling, variance drops. The floor protects the basics on bad days, the ceiling encourages thoughtful touches on good days. Measure the spread of response times and first‑time resolutions, not just the average. An average of two hours hides a lot if some people wait six minutes and others wait six hours. A customer can feel that difference.
Service science calls this reducing variance and controlling moments of truth. The peak‑end rule says endings matter, so polish them. Do this monthly and heroic efforts become less necessary because the ordinary becomes reliably good.
Review the last month of interactions and write the best and worst sentence for each stage. From there, set a clear service floor and a few ceiling touches, then script only the first and last lines so you reduce variance without killing personality. Track the spread of response time and first‑time resolution to see where customers feel the wobble. Tidy your endings this week.
What You'll Achieve
Create calmer teams and steadier reviews by making the typical experience reliably good, cutting outliers that break trust and supporting extra touches when possible.
Shrink the experience gap systematically
Map best and worst moments
List your past 30 days of interactions. Write one sentence for the best and worst for each stage: first contact, purchase, delivery, follow‑up.
Set a service floor and ceiling
Define the minimum acceptable behaviors (floor) and the special touches you add when you can (ceiling). Train to the floor, reward the ceiling.
Script beginnings and endings
Standardize only the first line and the last line at each stage. Predictable openings and clean endings reduce variance without killing personality.
Measure variance monthly
Pick two metrics customers feel—response time and first‑time resolution rate—and review the spread, not just the average.
Reflection Questions
- Where did our worst moments happen, and what would a floor have prevented?
- What does a clean ending look like in our context?
- Which two metrics reveal variance our customers actually feel?
- How can we reward ceiling behaviors without creating pressure to perform theatrics?
Personalization Tips
- Dental office: Guarantee a friendly name greeting and on‑time starts within five minutes while keeping the option for small surprises like a warm towel.
- E‑commerce: Standardize “Order received” and “Delivered—anything we can fix?” emails to tighten endings.
Unmarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging
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