Who says Trinidad and To­ba­go busi­ness­es can­not rise to world-class cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence? They can ab­solute­ly do so. It means com­mit­ting their hearts, minds and the dis­ci­plined ap­pli­ca­tion of ser­vice sci­ence to the task.

A few days ago, I had one of the best cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ences I’ve en­coun­tered in a while. It re­mind­ed me of the im­mense, of­ten un­tapped po­ten­tial, sit­ting right here in our lo­cal busi­ness land­scape. My hope is that, in the new year, this po­ten­tial fi­nal­ly con­verts in­to wide­spread, na­tion­al lev­el ser­vice ex­cel­lence. So, here’s my sto­ry. On my way to a client meet­ing, I stopped by a near­by bak­ery to grab a quick snack. An at­ten­dant as­sist­ed me with gen­uine warmth and help­ful­ness. At the check­out, the cashier in­formed me that they were out of spoons. I didn’t make a fuss and went on my way.

As I ap­proached the client’s build­ing, I no­ticed the same at­ten­dant walk­ing briskly out of the en­trance. I stopped her to thank her again for her as­sis­tance. She looked at me, smiled and pre­sent­ed me with a spoon, neat­ly wrapped in a nap­kin, say­ing, “I just got this for you!!” I was floored. She had over­heard the cashier men­tion the spoon short­age and qui­et­ly slipped out to the neigh­bour­ing busi­ness to get one for me.

That, to me, is what it means to “go the dis­tance.”

Of­ten, we hear lead­ers urg­ing em­ploy­ees to “go the ex­tra mile,” but the re­al trans­for­ma­tion hap­pens when em­ploy­ees choose to go the dis­tance. Ex­act­ly what this cus­tomer-cen­tred em­ploy­ee demon­strat­ed. By any stan­dard, lo­cal or in­ter­na­tion­al, what I ex­pe­ri­enced that day was a world-class cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence.

Why was this ges­ture so cap­ti­vat­ing? Sev­er­al rea­sons. This em­ploy­ee, my “ex­pe­ri­ence cham­pi­on,” slipped away with­out fan­fare and was walk­ing back briskly, clear­ly hop­ing to catch me be­fore I left the bak­ery. This was not per­for­ma­tive. Just a qui­et in­ten­tion to de­light a cus­tomer, a hope that she would find a spoon next door and a de­ter­mined walk to in­ter­cept me. Her ac­tions were root­ed in gen­uine help­ful­ness, not per­for­mance the­atrics.

As the cus­tomer, I felt the warmth she ex­ud­ed. I had been wa­ver­ing be­tween two or three snack choic­es and not once did she show im­pa­tience or ir­ri­ta­tion. My sit­u­a­tion was sim­ple, but I sus­pect her com­po­sure would re­main in­tact, even un­der pres­sure.

I ap­pre­ci­at­ed, as well, the silent ges­ture of apol­o­gy. She recog­nised the bak­ery had dropped the ball and im­me­di­ate­ly act­ed to course-cor­rect. She could have de­fault­ed to a sim­ple apol­o­gy for the lack of spoons, which I would have ac­cept­ed. But she chose a high­er stan­dard. This ex­pe­ri­ence stood in stark con­trast to an­oth­er, that was deeply un­pleas­ant. While shop­ping at a re­tail out­let, the pay­ment counter and the item col­lec­tion counter were at op­po­site ends of a fair­ly large store. The pay­ment line was long and slow, while the col­lec­tion point was backed up as well. To my dis­be­lief, I was asked to ac­com­pa­ny the ware­house at­ten­dant back to the ex­act spot where I had found the item just to iden­ti­fy it.

Why not pull it up on the screen at the col­lec­tion point, con­firm the item and re­trieve it from the ware­house? Why was I need­ed for that re­trieval jour­ney? The en­tire process was so cum­ber­some that I be­gan re­think­ing my fu­ture with this pop­u­lar re­tail­er. I shud­der to imag­ine the frus­tra­tions cus­tomers will face as the Christ­mas shop­ping rush in­ten­si­fies.

The same prin­ci­ple ap­plies to on­line shop­ping plat­forms. The ex­pe­ri­ence should nev­er be clum­sy or dis­joint­ed, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the high adop­tion of dig­i­tal trans­ac­tions. On­line jour­neys must be seam­less. Cus­tomers should be able to move from chan­nel to chan­nel with­out los­ing con­ti­nu­ity. They should not have to restart trans­ac­tions be­cause of back­end is­sues and busi­ness­es must do every­thing pos­si­ble to pre­vent un­nec­es­sary frus­tra­tion.

Get­ting a busi­ness to the point where cus­tomers’ eyes don’t glaze over dur­ing the rush and crush of Christ­mas trans­ac­tions re­quires one crit­i­cal shift. Lead­ers must “think” like the cus­tomer and re­move every bar­ri­er to speed, smooth­ness and so­lu­tions. On­ly then can op­er­a­tional de­sign be­come tru­ly cus­tomer-cen­tric.

A fi­nal word on cus­tomer-cen­tric­i­ty dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son. At­tack your own busi­ness. Stress test its re­silience un­der “what if” sce­nar­ios and po­ten­tial ad­verse in­ci­dents. Score its per­for­mance, iden­ti­fy the gaps and course-cor­rect, so that those “make-be­lieve” sce­nar­ios do not be­come “lived” cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ences.

Just as my “ex­pe­ri­ence cham­pi­on” demon­strat­ed by her ac­tions. Ser­vice ex­cel­lence should go be­yond brand dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion. It should sit in the realm of brand dis­tinc­tive­ness, show­cas­ing just how well a busi­ness can stand out in a crowd­ed ex­pe­ri­ence mar­ket­place.