“Achieve baseline, and then surprise & delight” is my current catchy theory for how customer service in the Caribbean should be.

There are a few practitioners, but I think it needs to be much more widespread. There is a lot of scope to improve the general service levels in the Caribbean - both in the private and public sectors. In these small island markets crowded with competitors, one of the easiest ways to get organic growth through word of mouth is to aim for customer service experiences that will make people want to tell their friends.

Most businesses do the opposite though. They train staff to recite a litany of forced “please” and “thank-you’s” through gritted half-smiles, without any thought about what the purpose of the customer service interaction is. They confuse the service element with the operational element of the interaction. Anyone can pour a drink, place a utensil, send an invoice to a customer - but we’re forgetting that these are all chances to create a passionate fan or a patron for life by surprising them with a delightful interaction. Despite us all knowing that it isn’t only what you say, but how you say it, many businesses today treat customer service as an afterthought. The pervasiveness of this trend throughout society makes potential customers scared to interact with bank tellers, cashiers and service workers in our economy.

Danny Meyer, the New York restauranteur behind Shake Shack, Gramercy Tavern, 11 Madison, Maialino and many others once said that “good service means never having to ask for anything”. Granted, the level of anticipation and preparation that needs to go into doing that may be impractical for most, BUT at a minimum we can all begin to anticipate the more routine parts of interactions with our customers and think of ways to surprise and delight.

About a year ago, I was a heavy user of Store-All, the local long-term storage facility on island. At one point, between my sister and I, we had about 4 units filled mostly with extra furniture from our parents house. One Sunday, my partner and I decided to tackle one of the units and spent about 4 hours cleaning, sorting and recycling unwanted items. At the end of it - the storage unit in question was completely empty, and I made a mental note to call the storage office on Monday morning to inform them. Imagine my surprise when, at 8am, they called me, and in a friendly tone, explained that they saw that I had emptied the unit, and would I like them to remove the monthly billing amount from my account. I replied yes and the call ended pretty quickly - less than 3 minutes for the whole exchange…..but I was so stunned by the proactive level of service that I told everyone I saw for the next 2 days. You couldn’t pay for that level of organic advertising.

Mark Boyce, the cofounder of Hopscotch, has several points which I think are accurate, namely that there are many people in Barbados employed in customer facing roles who are in them for the long term with no possibility of advancement (which creates a sense of despair) and also, that it isn’t a focus for the Business Owner, rather, they tend to view the customer service function as a cost to be minimized.

I think that given today’s age of immediately blasting a company on Twitter or FB/IG when you feel like you’ve been wronged - we’re definitely seeing US and UK companies take a much more proactive stance on customer service, especially when it comes to correcting mistakes for people. This behavior has started to occur in the Caribbean as well, which means that managers and owners can no longer ignore the customer service aspect of their business. HOW someone experiences your offering is just as important as WHAT they experience.

As I continue to study high quality businesses of all sizes in the region, I envision a 2x2 matrix of customer service efforts:

The truly great companies have elements of planned customer service throughout the enterprise at various touch points. The Zappos story mentioned in the upper right quadrant above is particularly inspirational. Coupled with other elements (operational excellence, monitoring costs and funding etc), a great customer service strategy is a scalable competitive advantage which indicates something qualitatively positive about the leadership of the company. What is especially noteworthy, is when you find a company that is clearly changing and evolving their customer service strategy and tactics over time since the table stakes around customer service are always changing, and the bar of excellence keeps rising.

As customer transactions flow faster, and everything gets more competitive - with a copycat behind every corner, it’s difficult to be consistently original. In my view, an easier way to differentiate yourself in the Caribbean is to over-deliver on customer service, and to continue to surprise and delight.