On one end of the spectrum, I had the opportunity to dine at The Mainland Inn last week with some business associates. As usual, the meal was wonderful, but what really stood out was the outstanding service provided by our waiter. Upon seeing my associates, he said that he was glad to see them again; they had been to the restaurant for the first time the month prior. He was attentive to details of the meal as well as our needs at the table. His delivery was polite and effective. He did a beautiful job of describing the specials and complimented us on the selections we made. His good service became a topic of conversation at dinner. In short, we concluded that our waiter was a professional who took his job and our meal extremely personally. And we told many people about how good the meal and service was.

On the other end of the spectrum, I overheard a woman describe her experience at a McDonald's fast food restaurant the same week. According to her story, she drove past the restaurant every day and while driving past one night, she saw that the sign out front said 'Now Serving Shamrock Shakes', the season milkshake drink. Not normally disposed to order from McDonald's, she went through the drive-through and ordered a Shamrock Shake. "No ice cream" was the response from the drive through speaker. She indicated that she didn't want a ice cream; she ordered a shake. "NO ICE CREAM!", was the answer back again. Upset, she went inside the store to complain to the staff, only to be told by the drive-through manager that she was told there was no ice cream- why couldn't she understand that?

The lesson in these two experiences is that having a good quality product, whether a fine restaurant meal or fast food, is not enough if the customer doesn't get good customer satisfaction. Assuming that the quality of the product is good, good service will make a customer a raving fan, while bad service will cause them to crusade against the product or company - usually more vehemently than if they were a pleased customer. The woman who went to McDonald's told many more people about her negative experience than I told about my good one.

I drew the following conclusions from the experiences, which are applicable across any business:

• Good customer service is not a commodity. As a business, you can't simply spend money (whether it is for employees, outsourcing, technology) and expect to get good customer service from it. It must be a focus of the business, it must be a focus of the direct management, and it must be a focus of the customer service staff. Unless all of the parties work on it (and that costs money, resources, and caring), no business is going to be successful.

  To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity. - Donald A. Adams

• To provide good service, the customer service representative must care about the experience at least as much as the customer does. When this happens, the customer senses it. They understand that the person cares that their experience is good and they will become a fan as a result.
• You can't have good customer service with bad products or services. Good quality is the business' price of admission for good customer service. Customer service is cut from the same cloth as product quality. A balanced company does both well. Unbalanced companies don't and should be avoided. If the products or services are poor, spending money on customer service is a waste; all sides will end up disappointed.

By the time that most customer service takes place, the customer has decided to patronize the business. Good customer service is a leading factor for retaining that patronage and poor customer service drives it away.