Circum Network Inc.

JULY 14, 2001

The June 2001 issue of Harvard Business Review proposes an interesting analysis of results from behavioural sciences studies used to improve customer service. The article is entitled "Want to Perfect Your Company's Service? Use Behavioral Science". The authors, Richard B. Chase and Sriram Dasu, translate findings from behavioral-science research into five operating principles.

First, finish strong: the ending is far more important than the beginning of an encounter because it's what remains in the customer's memory.
Second, get the bad experiences out of the way early: in a series of events, people prefer to have undesirable events come first and to have desirable events come last.
Third, segment the pleasure, combine the pain: since experiences seem longer when they are broken into segments, it's best to combine all the boring or unpleasant steps of a process into one.
Fourth, build commitment through choice: people are happier when they believe they have some control over a process, particularly an uncomfortable one.
And fifth, give people rituals and stick to them: most service-encounter designers don't realize just how ritualistic people are.

Interesting read for those interested in customer satisfaction management.