Is ‘Good Enough’ Customer Service Good Enough For Your Business?

Are there business situations where “good enough” customer service is actually sufficient? Maybe, if you’re hawking potable water and tents at Fyre Festival or selling sunscreen on an island where cruise ships stop before setting sail for their home port, or if you have a literally unique product—Nintendo Switch-level uniqueness—and you don’t care about extending your product line in the future. In such a scenario, when it’s a one shot deal and you’re the only possible provider available to your customers, tolerable customer service might be all that is called for. Realistically, though, I mostly hear from businesses striving to reach the pinnacle of customer service; to become (and these are actual examples from my customer service consulting practice) “the Nordstrom of screwdriver distribution” or “the Ritz-Carlton of healthcare” or “the Zappos of banking”; they want me, as a customer service consultant, to bring them beyond a level of merely “good enough” customer service. And similarly, most likely your company or organization will fall squarely in the “good enough isn’t good enough” category, where settling for a service level anywhere below true excellence is a mistake. Not to belabor the point, but here are some industries and the reasons why superior customer service is so essential to growing and sustaining a business, in case you (or more likely, your boss), doesn’t understand why it’s not fine to settle for “good enough”; in each case I’ve provided a link to a full-length article of mine with more info on providing great customer service in the industry in question. Read more at Forbes.