Don't Delay

In this blog I would like to discuss a behavioral law, extensively studied in the research laboratory, that affects the value of every employee-customer interaction. It will be summarized as follows: the value of an outcome depends on the delay to that outcome.

Here are four important implications of this law:

1. Once a customer has identified their need, the more quickly it is delivered, the more valuable will be the customer’s perception of the outcome. For example, the faster you deliver the camera, resolve the complaint, complete the repair, produce the print, etc., the greater will be its perceived value.

2. As delay to a desired outcome increases, the value of that outcome decreases. No matter how elaborate your personal justification of the reasons for delayed action, procrastination systematically degrades a customer’s evaluation of your resulting hard work.

3. If you cannot meet an agreed upon action deadline, tell the customer when you will have it done, and be sure to alert the customer when it is done. If you wait for the customer to call, you have measurably diminished the value of your service. If you need more time to complete the transaction, alert the customer and re-establish agreement on the completion time.

4. Given two choices with the same outcome, a customer will choose the one with the shortest delay to obtain the outcome.

The law of delay is like the law of gravity, in that awareness does not negate its effect. For example, while you are free to personally disagree with the law of gravity, this offers no advantage in freeing yourself from its constant influence. The law of delay is equally non-negotiable. You may indeed provide to your customer an elaborate and highly believable justification for your delaying in providing some form of service, but the effect of delay always diminishes the value of your service compared to presenting that service with less delay.

It is important to note the effect of delay is relativistic. We remember how photo finishing businesses prospered in the era of one hour processing. Reducing the time of film processing and printing from several days to a mere 60 minutes offered customers an opportunity to substantially reduce the delay to receive their finished prints. Plus, in many cases the individualized attention facilitated by small batch processing allowed quality to increase. A lot of money was made by capitalizing on the behavioral effect of reducing delay for photo processing services.

While the philosophical debate continues to rage whether or not the world contains absolutes, the world of retailing is defined not by the absolute best retailer, but by the better retailer among competitors. It is convenient to say the quality of your photo finishing is better than your competitor’s quality, as there continues to be no independent tool to measure photo finishing quality. Indeed, this measurement loophole continues to offer a significant promotional advantage. However, it is considerably more difficult to promote the advantage of purchasing a camera or some other hard good from your store when the competitor’s store offers the same item. Lowering your price is a well known strategy to motivate a customer’s purchase, but this strategy comes at great expense.

A much more economical strategy is to enhance the value of making a purchase at your store. By systematically decreasing delay you can meaningfully increase the level of customer service. Here are some examples:

1. Answer the phone after fewer rings, return voice-mail, email, and all other actions related to your communication system as soon as possible – especially for customer complaints.

2. Complete all services when due.

3. Open the door to your store at the appointed time.

4. Place special orders as quickly as possible and follow-up with the warehouse to ensure the order is shipped according to plan.

5. Whenever possible, complete a customer’s request while they are in your store.

6. Quickly welcome customers as they enter your store with a non-business greeting, e.g., “Good morning, nice to see you again.”

7. Process refunds quickly.

I am sure that you and your employees can find additional ways to reduce delay in achieving customer service. Once you have established with your employees this dimension of customer service, they can apply this concept to all future situations they may encounter. Some enterprising store owners might consider employing delay as a direct measure of customer service. That is, the longer it takes, the poorer the customer service. This concept is utilized in automobile repair shops where the time to complete a repair has been well established. You might consider measuring the length of time necessary to resolve a customer complaint. How long should it take? Each store will establish their own standards, but the best stores will minimize delay in delivering customer satisfaction.