Businesses live or die based on their reliability. You can have the best product in the world, but it won’t be enough to keep you profitable if you don’t reliably give your customers what they expect, when they expect it, each and every time. No matter what your business is, being reliable makes your customers feel safe and secure. They want to know that their package will be delivered on time just as much as they want to know that their car will start when they turn the key, or that the pizza will be hot when it gets to their house, or that their hotel room will be clean when they check in.
Reliability lies at the heart of your company’s reputation and, in turn, your profitability. Charles Fombrun, a professor of management at New York University’s Stern School of Business, has written that “a reputation develops from a company’s uniqueness and from identity-shaping practices, maintained over time, that lead stakeholders to perceive the company as credible, reliable, responsible and trustworthy.” He added this: “By increasing our faith and confidence in the company’s actions, credibility and reliability create economic value.” Fombrun cited a study that identified reliability as one of the top ten factors that determine a corporation’s reputation and included “provides consistent service” in its definition of reliability.
If that doesn’t convince you, think of it this way. Suppose your local dry cleaner does a great job of cleaning and pressing clothes and removing stains. They charge low prices and always greet you by name and with a smile. But about 10 percent of the time your shirts aren’t ready when promised. Wouldn’t that be enough to make you look for another cleaner? Or suppose the restaurant that serves up your favorite tuna melt with friendly service and good prices is occasionally so slow in bringing your food that you’re late getting back to the office? How long before you’re eating someplace else? Suppose you have an auto mechanic who diagnoses problems like Sherlock Holmes, does impeccable repair work, and charges reasonable prices but sometimes leaves dirt on the seats and grease on the carpet. Who ya gonna call the next time you need repairs?
As many have observed, it takes a long time to build a good reputation and an instant to lose it. Remember when Toyota recalled 2.3 million cars because of an “unintended acceleration” problem? Overnight, a brand that had been synonymous with safety and dependability was seen as shoddy, or as one newspaper headline put it: TOYOTA RECALL TANKS RELIABILITY AND REPUTATION. It took a lot of work, but Toyota regained its well-deserved reputation for reliability and once again enjoys the loyalty of millions of drivers, like Priscilla and me. But most companies find it very hard to bounce back when they’re labeled unreliable, and some never do. When a business, product, or service that had been considered reliable betrays our trust, it jolts our senses. That’s when we start asking our friends questions like “Where do you get your shirts cleaned?” and “Do you have a reliable mechanic?”
If you want to keep your loyal customers, you need to maintain a stellar reputation for reliable service in both routine circumstances and exceptional situations. You don’t want people saying of your company, “They do great work most of the time, but I can’t count on them.” To a business, that’s a death sentence. You may not notice your customers’ absence until it shows up on your quarterly report. But by then, it will probably be too late to get those customers back. If, on the other hand, your company is synonymous with reliable service, customers will pay more and travel farther to do business with you instead of with a less reliable competitor.
And no matter how big your company is, its reputation depends on the reliability of every single employee. That’s why early chapters in this book emphasize the importance of hiring the right people, training them well, updating and upgrading their skills, and testing them along the way to make sure the training takes hold. Of course, as Rule #38 (“Keep Doing It Better”) makes plain, being consistent does not mean that you and your employees shouldn’t make changes that improve your service. What matters is not that the procedures themselves are exactly the same at all times, it’s that the quality of service is consistently great.
There should never be any exceptions to that.