No doubt most businesses would say that they strive to provide excellent customer service but in reality, as customers, we know better.

In fact, a lot of what passes as customer service is downright poor and serves more to creating barriers between businesses and their customers than actually engaging with them. Even where customer service is satisfactory, it’s often nothing to write home about.

As with so many thing in business in general and marketing in particular, you need to be outstanding to get noticed. Good service is no longer good enough - you need to deliver phenomenal service to get the word-of-mouth buzz going.

So what makes phenomenal customer service?

Phenomenal customer service starts with exceeding customer expectations. To simply meet expectations, you need to provide a good product or service and do so in a friendly, hospitable, open and honest fashion. By and large, customers are willing to forgive mistakes or problems so long as you treat those customers with respect when problems do arise.

Phenomenal customer service is therefore about one, or two, or ten steps beyond what would be considered reasonable or good service. It might not immediately sound like an exercise in marketing but in providing remarkable and memorable service you start to create advocates.

Advocates are people who are happy to do whatever they can to support you and your business – they’ll use you more often, they’ll ‘recruit’ friends and family to your cause and they’ll speak more convincingly about your business than any advertisement or press release ever can.

Planning for Phenomenal Customer Service

Start with a blank sheet for your planned business. Make a list of all the contact points - occasions where customers come into contact with your business.

From that list, identify what would be acceptable service in each situation. Now, go one step further, what would be exceptional and what would make you tell someone else about your experience?

That’s your benchmark.