Appropriating the Ruby Lip

Image: b-love via flickr

Red lipstick, it's a look that not every woman can pull off successfully. I recently ran across a sweatsuit-clad woman who was running errands while sporting a ruby pout. The combination of sweats and crimson lips alarmed me-it felt somehow wrong for this woman to have glammed up so much in one regard and then have completely jumped ship in another. If her sweat-suited look felt more pulled together, i might have been all for it, but in this case the ruby lip felt like a mask for some sort of inner dishevelment.

If I may, I'd like to use the ruby lip as a metaphor. Far too many service organizations put on the red lipstick without considering the nature of the overall story that they are telling customers. Sure, a ruby lip is sexy, but what's sexier is ruby lip that's paired with a killer head-to-toe ensemb. Sexier still is a ruby lip matched with appropriate outfit and attitude. The ruby-lipped ladies who lock in long term results are the ones who have mastered the art of human interaction. And so it is with services. The best service providers know that it's not enough to lay on the glam and gloss of a shiny store, a flashy interface, or a killer marketing campaign to do good business. Truly designed services are the ones that feel both calculated and effortless, but i'm not talkin' sweatsuit style.

Far too often, service providers attempt to boil customer experience down to a set of formulas-a series of "if I do this, then this will happen"-type statements. Sure, experience can be predicted, but the best service providers know that a lot of what happens in a service encounter comes down to a sort of flirtation between provider and customer. The customer hints at his or her expectation and then the service provider responds with some sort of feedback. This back and forth continues for some time, in the best cases even after the service encounter is over. Indeed, the best service encounters become relationships not transactions. What remains important to remember is that while a single ruby-rimmed smile may be enough to seal the deal one time, aye maybe even two, long-lasting provider-customer relationships come only from a sense of mutual understanding and shared vision for the future. To close, i'd like to share a few lines from one of my favorite scholars, Robert Sternberg. I believe they're instructive in building relationships of any kind:

“Passion is the quickest to develop, and the quickest to fade. Intimacy develops more slowly, and commitment more gradually still.”

True commitment involves much more lip service. It is, by its very nature, hard work, but it can also be a lot of fun.