There’s a grow­ing num­ber of busi­ness­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go that gen­uine­ly want to achieve ser­vice ex­cel­lence. The de­sire is there, but the ex­e­cu­tion is of­ten miss­ing. The gap be­tween in­ten­tion and im­pact, that space be­tween the talk and the walk, is where trans­for­ma­tion ei­ther takes flight or falls flat. Many of these busi­ness­es un­der­stand that they could be do­ing bet­ter by their cus­tomers, yet they lack the will to pur­sue great­ness in the ser­vice are­na. It’s as if a silent whis­per­er con­vinces them that striv­ing for ex­cel­lence is un­nec­es­sary, es­pe­cial­ly if cus­tomers aren’t leav­ing in droves, or if com­peti­tors aren’t rais­ing the bar in a vis­i­ble way.

But that whis­per­er is mis­lead­ing these busi­ness­es. When cus­tomers re­spond pos­i­tive­ly to an­nu­al sen­ti­ment sur­veys, say­ing they’d rec­om­mend a busi­ness to oth­ers, that’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly a per­ma­nent en­dorse­ment, it’s re­flec­tive of their feel­ings at a mo­ment in time. Had the sur­vey been con­duct­ed on a dif­fer­ent day, af­ter a frus­trat­ing ex­pe­ri­ence or a mo­ment of dis­ap­point­ment, the re­sponse might have been very dif­fer­ent. With­out cul­ti­vat­ing per­son­alised, on­go­ing re­la­tion­ships with cus­tomers, busi­ness­es are re­ly­ing on ag­gre­gat­ed da­ta that masks in­di­vid­ual shifts in sen­ti­ment, over time. This cre­ates a false sense of se­cu­ri­ty, where sur­face-lev­el met­rics may be mis­tak­en for per­sis­tent loy­al­ty.

Too many busi­ness­es in T&T are trapped in the il­lu­sion that they’re do­ing well, sim­ply be­cause they’re not do­ing poor­ly. But ser­vice ex­cel­lence isn’t bi­na­ry, it’s a spec­trum that spans fail­ing to meet cus­tomers’ ex­pec­ta­tions, to bare­ly sat­is­fy­ing them, to con­sis­tent­ly ex­ceed­ing them. While busi­ness­es fall on dif­fer­ent points along this con­tin­u­um, the com­mon thread among all is that they’re leav­ing mon­ey on the ta­ble by not max­imis­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to achieve true ser­vice ex­cel­lence and, by ex­ten­sion, stronger cus­tomer re­ten­tion, rich­er brand eq­ui­ty and more pow­er­ful word-of-mouth ad­vo­ca­cy.

The few busi­ness­es that do break through, those that dou­ble their cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence im­pact, year af­ter year, aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly in­vest­ing mil­lions. They’re sim­ply lis­ten­ing, pay­ing at­ten­tion to the voice of the cus­tomer and act­ing on the in­sights served to them dai­ly. This isn’t rock­et sci­ence. It’s the dis­ci­pline of cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence man­age­ment, the strate­gic, in­ten­tion­al prac­tice of align­ing op­er­a­tions with re­solv­ing cus­tomers’ needs and ex­ceed­ing their ex­pec­ta­tions.

Some­times, the most im­pact­ful im­prove­ments are de­cep­tive­ly sim­ple. Take the check­out ex­pe­ri­ence. I once stood in line at a re­tail out­let where every cus­tomer had to wait for some­one from the back­end to come for­ward and wrap their pur­chas­es be­cause the cashier was not in a po­si­tion to do so. The front­line and back-end teams were op­er­at­ing in such si­los that the re­sult was a slow, frus­trat­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for every­one. Cus­tomers were ir­ri­tat­ed and I couldn’t help but won­der how such an eas­i­ly fix­able is­sue had been al­lowed to per­sist.

Si­los are a nat­ur­al part of the in­ter­nal land­scape of any busi­ness, but when they be­gin to dom­i­nate dai­ly op­er­a­tions, they can qui­et­ly erode the very foun­da­tion of ser­vice de­liv­ery. Mis­align­ment be­tween de­part­ments doesn’t just cre­ate in­ter­nal in­ef­fi­cien­cies; it im­per­ils the over­all cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence. What be­gins as a mi­nor dis­con­nect, can snow­ball in­to a sys­temic fail­ure to meet the cus­tomer’s ex­pec­ta­tions, leav­ing busi­ness­es vul­ner­a­ble to rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age and missed op­por­tu­ni­ties.

One of the sim­plest and cost-ef­fec­tive ways to dou­ble cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence im­pact is to en­sure that in­ter­nal si­los op­er­ate in sync. In to­day’s dig­i­tal age, this means more than just cross-de­part­men­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It de­mands the seam­less in­te­gra­tion of hu­man and dig­i­tal labour, the strate­gic use of da­ta in­tel­li­gence and the de­ploy­ment of tech­nol­o­gy to iden­ti­fy and elim­i­nate fric­tion points along the cus­tomer jour­ney. When sys­tems talk to each oth­er and teams col­lab­o­rate on a shared mis­sion, the cus­tomer feels it. Speed, clar­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy be­come the norm, not the ex­cep­tion.

An­oth­er pow­er­ful lever for el­e­vat­ing cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence is the cel­e­bra­tion of mi­cro-mo­ments. Those trans­ac­tion­al in­ter­ac­tions that, when han­dled with care, trans­form in­to last­ing mem­o­ries. Re­mem­ber­ing a cus­tomer’s name, re­mov­ing un­nec­es­sary steps from a process, or sim­pli­fy­ing a con­fus­ing in­ter­face may seem small, but they car­ry im­mense emo­tion­al weight. These mo­ments sow the seeds of loy­al­ty and when nur­tured, they con­vert in­to sto­ries cus­tomers share will­ing­ly.

The re­al break­through oc­curs when ser­vice ex­cel­lence be­comes so em­bed­ded in the cul­ture of the busi­ness that it’s no longer a de­part­ment or a KPI; it be­comes the norm. When val­ues, rit­u­als and re­wards are aligned around cus­tomer-cen­tric­i­ty, em­ploy­ees be­gin to see them­selves not just as task hus­tlers, but as ex­pe­ri­ence own­ers. They be­come en­er­gised by the mis­sion of mak­ing cus­tomers smile.

Choos­ing to dou­ble cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence im­pact is a de­c­la­ra­tion by a busi­ness that it re­fus­es to be tone deaf to the deep­er needs and de­sires of its cus­tomers. It’s a shift from lip ser­vice to lived ser­vice. Ser­vice ex­cel­lence stops be­ing a lofty ide­al dis­cussed in board­rooms and be­comes a vis­i­ble, tan­gi­ble force that dri­ves every in­ter­ac­tion with every cus­tomer.

It trans­lates in­to those mo­ments when as­pi­ra­tion meets ex­e­cu­tion and the cus­tomer feels the dif­fer­ence.