“The Ex­tra Mile” is the theme for this year’s in­ter­na­tion­al cus­tomer ser­vice week, cel­e­brat­ed an­nu­al­ly dur­ing the first week of Oc­to­ber.

This theme is not new to busi­ness­es. We’ve heard its sis­ter state­ment of, “We go the ex­tra mile for our cus­tomers,” re­peat­ed count­less times by busi­ness­es ea­ger to con­vince cus­tomers of their com­mit­ment to serve.

It’s a fash­ion­able state­ment. It sounds good to cus­tomers and looks good on the shiny pro­mo­tion­al ma­te­r­i­al that floods so­cial pages and com­mu­ni­ca­tions chan­nels.

There is no beef with the state­ment. It does its job of hyp­ing up cus­tomer ex­pec­ta­tions and dri­ving traf­fic in­to the busi­ness.

The chal­lenge is that cus­tomers, be­ing trust­ing in­di­vid­u­als, take the busi­ness­es at their word.

They be­lieve the promise of go­ing the ex­tra mile.

The prob­lem starts when the promise is bro­ken and cus­tomers are left dis­ap­point­ed by the false de­c­la­ra­tion.

“We go the ex­tra mile” should not be a state­ment of in­tent.

It should be the min­i­mum stan­dard of ser­vice de­liv­ery. When an em­ploy­ee goes the ex­tra mile, that’s nei­ther a hero­ic act, nor a spe­cial event.

It’s a base­line lev­el for meet­ing the promise made to cus­tomers, that their ex­pec­ta­tions are be­ing tak­en se­ri­ous­ly, by all em­ploy­ees.

Fail­ing to meet cus­tomer’s ex­pec­ta­tions of go­ing the ex­tra mile con­tin­u­al­ly, traps a busi­ness in the silent grip of medi­oc­rity.

Meet­ing the cus­tomers’ ex­pec­ta­tions con­sis­tent­ly, means that ex­cel­lence and, in par­tic­u­lar ser­vice ex­cel­lence, has been nor­malised.

Every busi­ness should take a hard look at its lev­el of ser­vice de­liv­ery and be bru­tal­ly hon­est in as­sess­ing its state of cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence.

As a ser­vice trans­for­ma­tion prac­ti­tion­er, I am con­vinced that many busi­ness­es know that their cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence lev­el is not world class.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, as a lead­er­ship de­vel­op­ment prac­ti­tion­er, I am con­vinced that lead­ers on­ly feel the burn­ing de­sire to up­grade the lev­el of ser­vice de­liv­ery, when the vol­ume of cus­tomer com­plaints be­comes un­bear­able.

At that point, every­one springs in­to ac­tion, be­cause “we don’t want to lose our cus­tomers.”

By then, it’s too late. Many cus­tomers would have left silent­ly, long be­fore the noise of un­hap­pi­ness got loud enough to be no­ticed.

The prob­lem is that the num­ber of de­fect­ing cus­tomers can’t be quan­tifi­able at this stage.

This would have been an avoid­able sit­u­a­tion, had the busi­ness­es been proac­tive in mon­i­tor­ing cus­tomer hard­ship and ef­fer­ves­cence, si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

Busi­ness­es that are se­ri­ous about achiev­ing and sus­tain­ing world class cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence, nor­malise ex­cel­lence as the cen­tral pil­lar of their ex­is­tence.

Ac­ti­vat­ing this phi­los­o­phy, re­jects the ex­tra mile mind­set, in favour of one that says, “We go the dis­tance for our cus­tomers.”

This phi­los­o­phy makes sense, par­tic­u­lar­ly in those in­stances when the cus­tomer needs an em­ploy­ee to go be­yond the ex­tra mile.

Can you imag­ine what would hap­pen if the em­ploy­ee re­sponds with, “So sor­ry, we’re on­ly al­lowed to go the ex­tra mile?”

In this age of cus­tomers who de­mand val­ue for mon­ey, such a state­ment would at­tract a swift de­fec­tion. Some cus­tomers on­ly al­low a busi­ness one chance to fail.

A busi­ness that makes “go­ing the dis­tance for cus­tomers” a part of its cul­tur­al re­al­i­ty, is en­abled by three levers that re­main con­stant.

A com­mit­ment to ex­cel­lence. The right peo­ple. A strate­gic fo­cus on per­pet­u­al rel­e­vance.

To­geth­er, these levers cre­ate the con­di­tions for a busi­ness to be­come a well-oiled ma­chine that serves cus­tomers un­til they are de­light­ed.

Any busi­ness that checks off these three box­es, is like­ly to dom­i­nate its mar­ket.

“We go the ex­tra mile” for cus­tomers is a com­pelling ring­tone.

“We go the dis­tance” on the oth­er hand, is a com­pelling re­al­i­ty.

It sig­nals that the busi­ness promis­es to spare no ef­fort to meet cus­tomers’ needs, ex­ceed their ex­pec­ta­tions and de­liv­er de­light.

Cus­tomer Ser­vice Week was de­signed, orig­i­nal­ly, to recog­nise the ef­forts of ded­i­cat­ed cus­tomer con­tact pro­fes­sion­als.

Over time, it has be­come a cel­e­bra­tion of cus­tomers, as well, for their loy­al­ty and sup­port.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, some busi­ness­es miss the point.

They de­liv­er mediocre ser­vice through­out the year, yet launch dra­mat­ic ac­tiv­i­ties dur­ing cus­tomer ser­vice week. Cus­tomers and em­ploy­ees alike, no­tice the in­con­gru­ence.

Lead­ers who val­ue out­comes over op­tics, pass on the per­for­ma­tive ges­tures.

They choose in­stead, to build a “lived” cus­tomer cen­tric cul­ture, so that they nev­er have to dis­guise its ab­sence dur­ing cus­tomer ser­vice week.