What does the client want?

Developing and managing your client capital: this is one of your daily stakes. Client is the key and he has to be satisfied; everybody now knows it and understands why. Difficulty lies in what should be done to achieve best client satisfaction. The notion of service seems here to be in the middle of discussions.


How often did I hear French or European community in Moscow complain about the service in Russia: “they do not have any sense of service here…a long way is forward.” But again, what does that mean? Don’t we react with our own really French/European experience without taking into account local culture? Take for example our favorite exercise at the check-out; “SBAM in French language” (Sourire- Bonjour-Au revoir- Merci) could be translated by “SHGT” in English (Smile-Hello-Good bye- Thank you) and try to apply it in your store here in Russia. Sure, employees will do it but perhaps not really understand it. How can we be so sure that Russian customers are receptive to all those signs? Simply ask employees themselves and you will learn a lot. They will tell you that they do not see any good reason to smile to people they do not know…moreover, those people should not understand at all why this employee is smiling to them…does she/he want something? Could be misunderstanding… Other country, other culture.

Clients are difficult to satisfy and there is no single recipe that could be duplicated. How can we work on satisfaction and define suitable service quality?

B. Averous and D. Averous worked on a very simple and operational model called “Averous quare”. In this model Averous defines 4 types of quality: perceived quality and expected quality by customers; required quality and achieved quality by company. The key and also starting point is as usual customers. Each company wanting to define a real orientation to client satisfaction takes information from the customer himself: claims, after sales service, satisfaction surveys,”mystery client” …are as many tools to check the client satisfaction. Unfortunately those tools are often misused. A client claiming is often considered like a nuisance, while he should be welcome like a gift by the company. Moreover claiming clients still clients and the company can keep them and turn them into satisfied clients if it takes some time to answer them correctly. Clients could be very surprised themselves and then do real nice advertising for the company.

The challenge is to control and make sure that perceived quality of service is corresponding to expected quality, and achieved quality to required quality. And if required quality is really based on clients, then you have some chance to be successful.

Limits arise when the process is over pushed. What shall we think about companies, so strongly involved in customer satisfaction that this notion smothers the notion of clients itself? Buying or shopping in stores today or by internet could require a lot of time. You will be asked a list of questions to know what you did like, didn’t like, would like, wouldn’t like…before having the opportunity to buy what you wanted to! Some clients will for sure give up before the end and postpone their shopping or take the decision to go somewhere else…opposite result…

Recovering information about clients should not bother him or make him work!

Companies have to take into account level of service the clients want to get, moreover if this level is a key factor of success in competition environment. It is as well very important to maintain this level over the time and check regularly the matching between the 4 types of quality defined by Averous. In general level of quality expected is increasing with time as clients and competitors are getting more experimented in this field.