Reliability. Responsiveness. Relationships. 

Thirty years of customer service research has found there are three qualities a customer or client values most in a business—and they come in a very particular order.

1: Reliability | The ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately. 

2. Responsiveness | Speed, positivity, keeping the customer informed, showing a willingness to help. 

3. Relationships | Delivering caring, personalised attention. Asking questions, listening carefully and making them feel important.

Responsiveness and relationships seem pretty self explanatory, right? But what exactly is meant by reliability, and how can we show this to our clients?

In simple terms, reliability is delivering on your core promises. From the client’s perspective, it’s about your ability to provide what’s most important to them.

Take The Strategy Studio, for example. What’s most important to my clients is my ability to provide them with insights they can use to make improvements to their own businesses. It doesn’t matter how quickly I reply to emails (responsiveness) or how personalised my service is (relationships) if my insights can not be acted upon to achieve results (reliability.)

Here’s a few more examples of what reliability might look like: 

Let’s say you’re an accountant or lawyer. Your client needs you to be accurate, effective and communicate technical information in an approachable manner.

If you’re a floral designer your potential client is most focussed on the quality of your designs and product. 

If you’re a beauty therapist / hair stylist / makeup artist, the quality of your treatment/service is what’s most important. 

The key takeaway here is the importance of understanding what your target client needs and values, and then investing time and energy into consistently demonstrating your ability to competently and effectively fulfill this.

This is how you build trust, and this is how you prove that your business is the solution to what a client is looking for.