Customer service opportunities are unlimited because you can redefine existing markets, create new markets and optimize mature ones. Starbucks redefined an existing market for coffee. Genentech created a new market for biotech products and JetBlue optimized the mature market in airline travel.

Each situation mandates alignment of the value proposition of your business model to the ever changing and unmet needs of customers. Prior to founding Staples, Tom Stemberg played the role of a purchasing agent and interviewed small businesses to find their unmet needs.

There is no easy answer. To offer better customer service you must know their unmet wants and needs as well as their greatest fears. You must understand your customer better than your competitors.

Terry Eger, when VP of Sales at Cisco, knew that reliability was the top want and need for his customers and thought he had done his homework. Eger almost lost a huge order with Solomon Brothers who wanted to choose a competitor because of their ability to make a breakdown repair within four hours. Eger was blindsided by this concern but knew Cisco could do better than four hours and asked Solomon to give him until Monday.

His engineers tested their system over the weekend and found that even in the worst case scenario; the longest Cisco’s system would go down would be 26 seconds. Eger had not asked about his customers “worst nightmare” and it almost cost him the order.

Terry Eger, like Tom Stemberg asked his prospective customers a lot of questions and knew that unmet needs always exist. However as Cisco discovered with Solomon, their need to have its system running 100 percent of the time wasn’t immediately apparent.

According to David G. Thomson author of Blueprint to a Billion “There are two kinds of customer service benefits a company can offer: functional and emotional.” A nightmare is emotional experience to be avoided. Are you asking customers enough questions to determine both their functional and emotional needs?

Thompson continues, “For example, JetBlue offers functional benefits, such as on-time departures and arrivals, as well as non-stop travel. But it also offers the emotional benefit of enjoyment, comfort, and peace. Together those qualities create a breakthrough value proposition.”

On his way to the gym, after dropping off a video at Blockbuster and paying a $40 late fee Reed Hastings may not have been experiencing the emotional benefits of enjoyment, comfort or peace. How can you create a video rental business where the customer could keep the movies as long as they wanted and pay a monthly fee like I do at the gym he wondered?

Netflix was born from that question, and as this true story of its founder, Reed Hastings demonstrates…there are always unmet customer wants. Hastings realized that no one wants to pay a late fee…ever! With one low monthly payment, a Netflix customer starts with two or more movies and only has to return one before being mailed another.

On January 16th The Boston Globe reported that “Netflix Inc.” will start showing movies and TV episodes over the Internet, providing its subscribers with more instant gratification as the DVD-by-mail service prepares for a looming technology shift threatening its survival.”

Hastings is still asking what does the customer want? “The service is being offered at no additional charge and the allotted viewing time will be tied to how much customers already pay for their DVD rentals. Under Netflix’s most popular $17.99 monthly package, subscribers will receive 18 hours of Internet viewing time.”

Broadcom had its computer chips in 80 percent of America’s cable modems and TV-set-top boxes by the late 1990s and its revenue growth rate exceeded Texas Instruments and Intel according to Blueprint to a Billion. How? They constantly asked their customers, “If we give you this, is this what you want to buy?”

Customer service opportunities are unlimited because you can redefine existing markets as Netflix and Starbucks have done. You can create new markets as Cisco and Genentech have done and optimize mature ones as Staples and JetBlue demonstrate.

Customer service needs are constantly changing and those organizations that are not asking the people they serve what they want and need as well as what is their worst nightmare may be future Blockbuster events waiting to be block-busted. “If we give you this, is this what you want to buy?”

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