Good Services principle number 9: A good service is consistent.

I like this principle particularly, because consistent doesn’t mean uniform.

Your services are obviously going to be different if they take place over different channels or formats, or if you have different levels of offering.   A one-to-one consultancy isn’t going to be the same as a do-it-yourself option, but your service should live up to your Promise of Value across channels, across time, across customer types and across all individual customer journeys.   There should be no gaps – something that takes extra care if your organisational structure is non-orthogonal to your processes.

The great thing about consistency is that it allows for the kind of variation that uniformity would stifle.   The kind of variation that allows you people to over-deliver on your Promise and delight individual clients – even when things go wrong.   As you design the services that enable your business to deliver though others, remember to empower that ability to vary in your team.  Not only will it make for more delight and flexibility, it will be the means by which you discover new needs and desires in your client base.

‘Consistency’ is the perfect word here because it describes how your service should feel.

That’s what keeps it human.