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When we talk about how good your service is, we can easily talk about it. From our point of view. In other words the service provider, we did it on time, we did what we said we were going to do, we met the service level agreement, you know the contractual terms were complete etc. That doesn’t speak about it from the client’s point of view. That doesn’t give us a language to really appreciate what’s their opinion, what’s their perception, what’s their experience about the service that we’ve provided. 

So I came up with something called the six levels of service and let’s start sort of in the middle. if you do what you said you were going to do and you fulfil the conditions of satisfaction in the contract let’s call that expected. It’s just normal. In the old world 30 years ago there was a fallacy that said, if you fulfil if you meet expectations you’ll produce customer satisfaction and the fallacy was that a satisfied customer would be a loyal customer. Oh, remember those days!  Anybody in digital marketing knows you can satisfy a client does not mean they’re going to stay with you and be loyal. So that level of expanded is not good enough. But before we go higher to what would be good enough let’s see what’s below it. If you don’t fulfil expectations, if you don’t do, (you know the normal) but you do the minimum. In other words, you fulfilled the contract but the experience for the client wasn’t very nice. What does that mean? You were late, you were inaccurate and then you fixed it, your people were not polite, you did the job but you didn’t give the explanation so they weren’t sure about it and they had to come chase you, so that would not be expected that would be what I call basic.

So it’s the bare minimum. they got what you promised, you know, but it wasn’t a nice experience. if we go below that, you violated the legitimate minimum expectations, you didn’t keep the service promise and I call that level criminal. so now you got criminal, meaning you broke the promise very sick you delivered the bare minimum and expected, just normal. 

Now that’s not where a digital marketing agency wants to be in the heart or in the mind of a customer. So let’s go up. Above expected is when you serve somebody the way they like it. The way they hope for the way they prefer and I call that desired level of service. So for example you probably have some clients who prefer to get everything by email. But then others want to talk to you on the phone, and then there’s others who say, no man I live on Whatsapp come on give it to me again send me a text. You’ll get some people who say, just stick it in the google sheet and other people say no I don’t want to get it there I want you to give it to me in some other manner. so it’s the same outcome you’re providing, the same digital marketing activity you’re doing on their behalf, but the way you’re serving them is the way they like it. Some want a weekly review, some on a monthly review, some don’t want to review as long as you’re getting the results. So you can’t say this is the way we serve and figure that everybody’s going to get service the way they desire. Oh, wait a minute now that means desire is not in your world it’s in the customer’s world.

The fifth level of service is called surprising! it’s when you do something unexpected and they like it so it’s like getting an unexpected gift but the challenge with that one is not everybody values the same thing. So somebody let’s say who values speed you want to inform them the moment it happens and they’re going man I’m getting information from you in real-time that’s what I like. somebody else is going, why are you bothering me with this man! I mean what I want is that one, end of every two-week review but the way I want it presented to me is the way I like to see it, and those graphs that you have and those forms that you use it’s just not like, I don’t understand, not user friendly. And then the smart digital marketing agencies say, “Well that’s okay we know the data is going to be the same but how would it work for you for us to present this. Let me show you three different templates that we can do this in”. And let the client pick and they’re going, “Man this is great”, you know those other digital marketing agencies, they were showing me the same data but they just didn’t take the time to think about how we’d like to see. Uh Surprising! 

The final level is when you blow them away. It’s oh my god service, right. We call that unbelievable! So here’s the thing about those six levels of service from Criminal, Basic, Expected, Desired, Surprising, Unbelievable, they’re no stairs, they’re not fixed. This son of a gun is an escalator always going down. which means the thing that you did that was unbelievable it will be but only the first time you do it if you do it again, oh nice surprise. You do it again it becomes what they desire. You do it again it becomes expected after a while it’s basic and if you don’t do it, you’re a criminal.