The joy that lies in providing a good service

The renowned researcher talks about service that makes both provider and recipient happy

The joy that lies in providing a good service

For the scientist and entrepreneur Idriss Aberkane, service should always be part of a holistic system. After all, it doesn’t just make the customer happy, it can even give the provider pleasure, too.

In his native France, Idriss Aberkane is a much-sought-after interviewee on a wide range of topics. Cécile Mora, Corporate Public Relations manager, interviewed him on the broad topic of service at Hager Forum.

Mr. Aberkane, your work looks at how our brain works. What does research into the brain tell us about services?

Something very important, that we humans always perceive the material side of our world first and foremost. In this respect we have a chimpanzee’s brain, because our first instinct is to look for things that we can reach and eat. Services, on the other hand, are invisible for the most part, and that makes it difficult for our brain to understand them and estimate their value. One counterexample would be a drinks machine at the train station. The can of soda from the vending machine will, in the majority of cases, be more expensive than the same can from the supermarket. However, for us, the service of not having to make a special trip to the supermarket to quench our thirst is a tangible advantage. So the first lesson is that if you want to sell a service, you need to make the advantage visible and tangible.

And what’s the second lesson?

That you should always give customers the feeling they have won something. Here we have another example from our close relative, the monkey. There’s an experiment they did with cotton-top Tamarin monkeys where they gave the test monkey a marshmallow. They then tossed a coin, and if the coin fell to the right the monkey got a second marshmallow. This made the monkey happy, because it understood that the coin toss meant an opportunity to get a second marshmallow.

That sounds logical, but what do we learn from this?

The outcome is quite different when you turn the whole thing around, if you show the monkey two marshmallows straight away and then toss a coin to decide whether it gets only one or both of the treats. Statistically it makes no difference; the monkey has a fifty-fifty chance of getting a second marshmallow. However, for the primate, the change in procedure makes a huge difference. If the coin falls on the ‘wrong’ side, the monkey goes berserk because it feels like a loss for him. On the other hand, when we feel that we have won something our body releases dopamine, the neurotransmitter for happiness and gratification. This is why it’s important to turn service into a perceptible and tangible winning experience.

How do you do that?

One of the most disregarded aspects in terms of service is the ‘last mile’. The general assumption is that there is a certain range for a service that you can deliver. And everything that goes beyond this range and is situated beyond our area of influence, so called ‘customer’s last mile’ is not our concern.

If you want to provide an outstanding service, you need to break out of your comfort zone and also look at the things that appear to lie beyond your usual area of influence.

At Hager Forum, scientist Idriss Aberkane explained why we are willing to pay significantly more for one service rather than another.

Can you give an example?

The Michelin restaurant guide is a good example. How did a tyre manufacturer wind up publishing a restaurant guide? Very simple, as a tyre manufacturer, Michelin recognised that part of the pleasurable feeling of being on the road is associated with eating in good restaurants. Another example is Tesla. When the electric car manufacturer was building its supercharger stations, people would ask what it was likely to cost to charge their vehicles at these stations. Yet Tesla CEO Elon Musk saw things differently, asking in return “…are we a battery charging company? No, we’re a car manufacturer. And because we sell our cars at a relatively high price, our customers should be able to fill them up free of charge. That’s part of the experience. We want to earn money from our cars and not from the charging process.” This decision was quite unusual especially in the luxury segment, yet today it is seen as an example of excellent service.

Idriss Aberkane is a French entrepreneur, researcher and professor of knowledge economy. Last November he gave an exclusive conference at Hager Forum in Obernai. It was entitled ‘Love can do’.

When did you recently experience excellent service?

I recently flew first class with Air France and experienced their ‘La Première’ service for the first time in my life. When you check in as a first class passenger, you are assigned an attendant from check-in until the start of your flight whose job it is to resolve any issues and cater to any requirements you may have. It was a seamless, perfect service because the attendant relieves the passenger of any worries concerning customs formalities, security checks and so on.

I could imagine artificial intelligence fulfilling a similar role in the future. Today, Siri can answer questions about things like the probability of rain today and whether we should take an umbrella. Tomorrow, an artificial intelligence like Siri could fulfil more complex jobs such as: “Hey Siri, could you arrange a holiday job for my daughter in Singapore?”

What about a counterexample, what constitutes poor service?

Poor service is when you’re still expected, in this day and age, to pay for Wi-Fi in your hotel. It’s as absurd as having to pay for water there. Some hotels have a different system along the same lines, offering their guests a choice between a free but terrible Wi-Fi and a high-performance alternative that costs ten dollars a day. Again, this is like providing cold water for free but charging for hot water in the hotel bathroom. Things like this happen when you put your own interests above those of the customer.

Why is the ‘seamlessness’ of the service experience you mentioned so important?

…because the best services are part of a holistic ecosystem. Greedy providers view each one of their services as an individual product that must yield a profit. This just leaves customers feeling angry and frustrated. Good services, on the other hand, lead to an overall experience of being well taken care of and having won something. So when you’re in a hotel, it should be clear that you’re in a host environment and not in a Wi-Fi shop. After all, service is fun for all sides.

Do you really mean that? With many providers you feel as though they cough up their services as unwillingly as they would their safe combination.

When it comes to challenges, in this world there are two ways of solving them. Either you see them as tedious tasks that you intend to carry out with as little effort as possible. Or, as Churchill put it, “…an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity.” Pessimists don’t see problems as opportunities that could enrich their lives, by for example, coming up with a new service.

Optimists, on the other hand, are people who solve problems because they enjoy it. This is how the best services come about. I follow a similar strategy myself at my company. When I encounter a problem, I only start to tackle it once I have found an aspect of fun in it, be it a microcredit in Senegal or a videogame for a major company. Unfortunately, most people take a different approach. They see they have an obligation and think it’s normal to feel bored by the prospect of meeting it. That is the legacy of the Industrial Revolution.

Could you explain that?

The Industrial Revolution left us with the belief that in your job you can either achieve fulfilment or productivity, but not both. This belief is still widespread today in countries like France, South Korea, Japan and China. And it’s wrong. After all, although a productive person doesn’t necessarily feel fulfilled by their work, a fulfilled person is always productive. Helping people find self-fulfilment in their work is an extremely profitable endeavour, quite apart from the fact that I don’t know a single fulfilled person who would be a burden on society. Yet I do know lots of productive people who are depressed, violent and in danger of becoming psychopaths.

People are like oranges. Either you can squeeze them or plant and cultivate them. When you squeeze them, you’re left with a glass of orange juice. On the other hand, if you plant them in a fertile environment, you will get an orange tree and a much higher yield of fruit over the long term. We need to decide what we want.

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