“We’ve found your cuddly dog!”
My son was about 10 years old when he was told this by a receptionist at the Madrid hotel we were about to leave. It was about 20 years ago.
I was thinking about this incident because of a nice story on the BBC website (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czjem0vm8geo - 7 March 2025) about a child’s cuddly elephant being found by a local butcher and returned to the child after a social media post was picked up.
And these two incidents, years apart, nicely link to something I’ve been thinking about – good service.
What is good service? Should you pay more for it, or should it just be the norm?
But then what does that mean – the norm? Service might be good for one person and not for another, even if they’re both paying the same price for the same thing.
In this, I am not really thinking about, say, sending a letter by post. Everyone knows and accepts there is (or there should be) a different delivery time between first-class and second-class post for which you pay a different fee.
I am in the middle of reading an excellent book: “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath. It was first published in 2007, but I am reading Penguin’s2024 edition. It’s sub-title explains what it is about: “Why some ideas hold and others come unstuck”.
“Made to Stick” is not directly about service – good or otherwise. But, as usually happens when I read, my mind went off on yet another tangent (that’s why it takes me a long time to get through a book) and I started thinking about this idea about service.
Discussing the USPs for a number of organisations, Chip and Dan Heath give examples of two that were pitching themselves in very different ways. One was Southwest Airlines and the other was Nordstrom, a department store. Southwest pitched itself as THE low-cost airline. Anything which would move them off that position would not be offered. Nordstrom can be an expensive place to shop but offered outstanding customer service. Chip and Dan Heath give some examples of what Nordstrom staff had been known to do, including gift wrapping something a customer had bought in another store, or refunding the cost of a product it didn’t even sell.
I suggest that, although these two examples might be at the extremes of their respective sectors, pretty much all of us can understand what’s going on and what we’re getting out of it.
But what about my own, personal, service?
“Personal” because, when I am mediating or coaching/mentoring, it is just me.
I am going to hazard a guess that many, not all, but many people who offer those services do so for a fee and sometimes they do so without charge.
But when we do choose to offer those services without charge, do we ever do so at some level different to when we are paid?
If that is possible, then what would a lower cost provision look like?
Maybe just on-line, instead of in-person? Perhaps, but how would I be different in those moments? Could I ever be?
Now you could bring insurance and ethical/professional standards into it. You might say that the effect of them is that you can never offer a different performance level.
But if you could work something out, you were upfront about it and agreed differential pricing, there’s probably no reason you couldn’t perform to a different level.
For me, what this is really about though is personal reputation. How you want to be known, how you can be relied on, how you will treat people - all people.
You know, all that really important stuff.
And that Madrid hotel?
It was a very nice hotel in the centre of the city. Our son adored Floppy Dog – it went everywhere with us. Somehow it had got into a duvet cover and worked its way to the bottom. Housekeeping changed the sheets, and he was sent to the off-site commercial laundry with hundreds of other items. We were all devastated but tried to be realistic. It was likely gone for ever. But someone, likely several someones, were prepared to do something about it and search. And the next morning, as we were leaving, they made our son extremely happy, and very grateful.
Would a slightly not so nice hotel have done the same? Possibly. Who knows. I think it was all about the people we encountered that trip: who they were and how they wanted to be. Call me naïve, but I like to think they would have been like that wherever we would have encountered them.
As for me, I cannot conceive of a time when, even if I am providing my services without charge, I would do so at any lesser level than my very best.
My hope is that is reflected in my dealings with all my clients and that is why they come back to me, or recommend me.
Common sense?
Yes, probably.
But it is amazing how often one has to be reminded of something to realise that it is in fact common sense.
© Jason Hunter, March 2025
