There is a popular saying – Go the extra mile, It’s never crowded. In today’s
world, giving extra and receiving extra is not at all common. Lesser
competition lies here, though it has tremendous value beneath.
Customer satisfaction is the key word to success for any business. Not only
now, but for past many years, there has been number of innovations,
attempts, experiences to discover the best way to unlock the potential
behind ‘Customer satisfaction’. Those who could achieve winning even a
small piece of ‘Customer Satisfaction’ have realized tremendous gains out
of it. Specially in services, customer satisfaction brings huge acceleration in
the growth of business. Delivering extra works positively and quickly in this
direction.
Customer Delight –
Concept of Delight (extra) is very much crucial in
achieving ‘customer satisfaction’. If businesses or professional servants
deliver something extra beyond the agreed/contracted tasks, it creates
relatively higher customer satisfaction and thus scalability of business gets
smoother.
‘Extra’ ignites the emotions/feelings in human mind quickly. As we deal
with people, In real world, it is important to understand the customer’s
emotion behind the contract/professional contract.
Example-
Offering tip to waiter/watchman is the best example to understand ‘Extra’ concept which is not a new behavior. For many years, we have seen that a small tip brings a big smile (if not on face, in the heart definitely). Sometimes, we start getting preferential treatment/services after a regular tip is offered to drivers/watchman/maids etc. Does this tip concept only work in small time services? Absolutely NO. As we understand, extra/tip ignites human emotions quickly, this equally works similar way in other services/businesses too.
‘Professional/Employee’ can equally expect similar benefits by delivering ‘extra’. Not only that brings smile to customer, with this customer satisfaction factor, long term contracts can be signed, and through this behavior, one opens opportunity to expand business/professional network.
What is ‘Extra’ in-fact:-
It is important to note that ‘delivering-extra’ means delivering something that is over and above what was agreed as per the contract/deal. However, sometimes, ‘Extra’ has power to bridge the deficit in delivery as per agreed terms and conditions. Why? Simply because it directly ignites human emotions/feelings.
Real time regular examples-
My house-maid agreed for 2000 bucks per month with 3 days-off against the work of house cleaning. However, without asking by me, she cleaned even side-fans/coolers, dusted weekly wooden almirahs and dressing table every week. This extra work done by her prompted me to offer 100 bucks extra on monthly basis.
I called-up a taxi driver for dropping me at Airport. I had 2 big suit-cases as I was travelling for 14 days. The taxi driver came in time for pick-up and gently placed my big suit-cases over the taxi-top and took-it off from there with care after reaching to the airport. This behavior gave me a happy-feeling and I offered him 100 bucks as tip.
Examples from business-
ABC Towers engaged in the business of Telecom towers providing services to the telecom operators (Telcos) such as Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance, Tata-tele etc. In order to provide network services, Telecom tower company signs an engagement/contract with Telcos for 93% up-time (continuous network at given speed with no breaks). Generally, the risks (down-time of towers) are associated with electricity, sudden break-down of critical equipment of towers, problems in Diesel Generator sets etc. However, with efficient engagement of O&M team, Telecom tower company could achieve 95% uptime (as against 93% uptime). For this, company had to spend some more money, but it was worth spending if business value can be increased for the customers. This efficiency created customer delight and improved customer satisfaction factor for telecom companies. Two years later, ABC Towers offered guaranteed 95% uptime at higher service rates. Telcos agreed to pay higher service rates going forward if 95% uptime is sustained since it was riskier for Telcos for risk from less than 95% uptime for network. Thus, initially extra deliveries by ABC Towers helped it to secure higher income and brand image with customer satisfaction.
Extra in Employer-Employee relations-
- Employers now-a-days have started offering ‘extra’ to its employees. This is naturally an excellent lever to keep employees motivated and realize maximum potential from them.
- Employees on the other hand tries to justify their value in the stream of various business activities by learning the business beyond their core work-profile so that they provide value when right opportunity exists in the work environment.
Careful realization of ‘extra’ part and gaining thereby-
- It is important to carefully understand or realize what is ‘extra’. Sometimes, parties start claiming ‘extra’ as right when it is offered continuously for a longer time. Cleverness is into charging the value of extra by increasing the fees so that sustainability is guaranteed, and this creates WIN-WIN for service provider as well as for service receiver.
- Business contracts – Purchase order/Customer Order/Employment offer or Joining Letter etc. needs to be written very clearly and explicitly. This creates confidence for quality of the deliverables and sets the expectations in true manner. Once this is done, the power of extra can be realized in better sense.
- The whole idea of ‘Extra-delivery’ is around empathy or motivation. This should not be wrongly mixed with filling-up gap of due deliverables.
- Often in Finance-Accounts/IT services, companies sign the contracts written with explicit terms and conditions. Howsoever the contracts are written, there is always a scope of confusion. Hence, such gaps can be dealt-with well with mix of understanding, empathy and emotions.
Real time example of ‘extra’ around-us–
Restaurants providing food services delivering high-quality food/services normally deals with customer-complaints of long-waiting time. Similar is the case with good professionals such as advocates, doctors, consultants, professional accountants/auditors, Teachers/Professors etc. They always have scope to unlock the benefits behind customer satisfaction. These days, we have started seeing play/game areas (often free) so that customers don’t feel waiting time a curse. Similarly, at Doctors/Consultants offices, we see Journals, Televisions with right topic-screening, serving Cool-drinks etc. quite often.
Real time example on Power of ‘extra’ from the business of BI-C-RIDE LTD:
An accountant employed at BI-C-RIDE Ltd realized the potential of extra very well.
Assistant Accountant in Finance (AP Team) – Rahim was hired at salary of Rs. 25000 per month for background jobs in accountancy. Basic KRA/KPI agreed were:
- Bills Validation (minimum 3 days and maximum 7 days from the date of Bills receipt) with PO Terms & Conditions & Users certifications.
- On-Time payment to Vendors.
- Issuing Debit Notes for returns or defects in services/deliveries.
- Validating Purchase Requisitions and managing Cost Center Budgets.
Rahim quickly learnt the business operations and the realized the pains of vendors as well as of users.
Users are the people who-
~ Raise Purchase requisitions (PR),
~ Based on their purchase requisitions (PR), Purchase Order is raised to the vendor (after due diligence as per company’s purchasing policy),
~ Upon receipt of goods/services. User certify that goods/services has been received and propose that the bills can be validated and booked (They also propose to return the bills or issue debit notes for exceptions or correct the bills for defects in services).
Pains observed were generally due to
~ Additional tasks/services agreed between vendors and users on Mails/Phone. Further, sometimes unwritten asks from the users creates lots of confusions on the quality of goods/services delivered by vendors.
~ In Factory, Quality Manager quite often issue special directions to the vendors (sometimes on mail and sometimes over phone). He used to take more time in certification of goods/services receipt, thereby, that created difficulties on Rahim side for achieving his KRAs.
How Rahim dealt with this situation using the power of EXTRA-
- Rahim is an IT-enthusiast and he worked with Abhay- Business Analyst in IT Team of BI-C-RIDE Ltd. to manage this situation. Abhay helped him with Power Automation tool/techniques and Power BI Tools of Microsoft. Rahim devised a way to send automated mailers and notifications to remind the users and vendors for their necessary actions to ensure timely bills validation and payment of the same.
- He developed notifications/mailers based on events defined in Power Automation tool. With the help of Quality manager, Rahim created a check-list in Power Automation and this helped vendors to ensure that bills are raised only upon fulfilment of tasks/activities mentioned under check-list. He used this tool to save key documents sent through mail in a separate folder to validate the invoices.
- Quality manager gets automated notifications when 100% points under the checklist are fulfilled and that helped him certifying bills for payments quickly.
- This ‘EXTRA’ effort performed by Rahim helped both vendors and BI-C-RIDE Ltd users in streamlining the AP process.
- Manager of Rahim was very impressed with this EXTRA efforts delivery from Rahim and offered him out-of-term incentive of Rs. 5000. Not only this, but Rahim also earned an award “Employee of the month” and an associated ‘Extra cash reward” of Rs. 3000.
- He is now among favorite work-force team for other automation tasks and also a good candidate to be considered for joining BPM Team.