Exceeding Customer Expectations—Step 1: Identify

The first step in the model for exceeding customer expectations is to identify the product or service you provide and identify the customer you serve. Everyone in any position is a customer service provider. If you don't provide a product or service, your job probably shouldn't exist. Everyone is in customer service.

When we say customer, we mean anyone who touches your product or service. It starts with internal customer service. The service we provide fellow employees and other departments within our own organizations, as well as our suppliers, and anyone else with whom we work to get our jobs done. For example, you are providing internal customer service when a colleague asks you for information about a project or when your boss asks you for help. Some people may only provide internal customer service. Think about human resources. Their entire job is providing internal customer service as their primary customers are employees within the organization. Everything starts with how we treat those we work with every day. How you or any other member of your organization responds to one another is reflective of how your customer's issues are handled.

We all have primary and secondary customers as well. Primary customers are the ones you spend the most time targeting. Who is the audience for your product or service? Not knowing your primary customer can result in a lot of problems, customer turnover, unhappy customers, and limited growth and profitability. And secondary customers are the other folks you impact with your work or with your product or service.

If we don't know who our customers are, we won't know how to tell them about our product or service or how to get it to them. Make sure the product or service you provide and who your customer is.