Everyone says they want and expect good customer service. Business owners and managers always claim that their business provides excellent customer service. In the luxury ground transportation industry, our success depends upon the delivery of excellent customer service. What is “excellent customer service”? What matters most is not what a business thinks is considered great customer service but rather what defines great service in the eyes of our customer. The conditions that create an over-the-top experience will vary depending upon what we are consuming as a customer. In some places, your view of customer service is created by a single person such as a food server. In a hotel, great service might extend to the valet attendant, the desk clerk and the housekeeping department.
As a common example, we all become a customer when we dine in a restaurant. What you might define as great service might not be the same for others. Our priorities as individual people are different. Some people are okay with a delay in being seated while others might want to be seated immediately if they see an open table. Some people get very upset if their iced tea runs empty. Some people expect a sit-down restaurant to serve food as quickly as a fast-food joint while others like a less-rushed pace to enjoy the experience. In a restaurant, it can come down to the little things like adding a slice of lemon in water. Some people hate that. Some people appreciate that. The bottom line – ask a diner if they would like lemon in their water before making the assumption or serve it on the side on a small plate as a classy presentation with no need to ask.
In the case of great service in a restaurant, we tend to give all the credit to our food server because that is the person that we interact with the most during our dining experience. However, for a server to achieve great service, the server must rely on many team members such as the kitchen staff, the hostess, the bartender and the bussers. One weak link in the chain, such as a slow cook can easily ruin your dining experience and reflect poorly on the server. We seldom think about these contributing situations when declaring the service was bad.
In the luxury ground transportation industry, there are many factors that can contribute to the delivery of excellent service. It begins with your very first contact with us to place your reservation. Our reservationist must be efficient in quickly determining a price based on many factors that include travel time, airport fees, tolls, corporate contracts and affiliate fees. We must correctly obtain all of your information such as pickup location, drop off location, number of passengers, how much luggage you have and handle any special requests such as providing orange juice. If you request orange juice and your chauffeur doesn’t have it, that’s an immediate failure in achieving great customer service. Missing any piece of required information can result in a customer service failure. The auto-detailer must make sure the vehicle is immaculate. The chauffeur must arrive early to the pickup location and calculate traffic along the way. The climate in the car must be not too hot or too cold. The route selected to the destination must be the optimal route based upon the time of day.
These are just some of our expectations at Ecko Worldwide Transportation Group. Our most important expectations are that we meet YOUR expectations. At the end of the day, the definition of excellent customer service is defined by you.