This rather odd name grew out of a discussion we had in our Scottsdale, Arizona Solutions Forum group about service levels.
The discussion started with ‘end-to-end service,’ and one of my members said that he didn’t think he could price for end-to-end service in his market (hair salons).
So, we started discussing what level of service he could price for. What evolved was an approach where he has his stylists render service, and he just provides them with a clean, stylish work environment—with pizza on Friday and, if you’re a good customer, a little wine when you come in.
There’s a nugget in all this, and that is: figure out what level of service you need to offer to stand out from the competition, offer it, and see if your customers like it. If they do, offer some deals for referrals, since that’s where most customer growth comes from.
We went through this analysis with our favorite internet/web design firm several years ago when GoDaddy assailed the market with cheap websites and discovered most customers weren’t looking for the cheapest site out there.
Some services, such as a salon picking up or delivering customers, might have to be eliminated to keep costs down. You can informally survey customers to find out which of your services they most value.
Bottom line, end-to-end service and extreme disservice aren’t really in conflict; disservice is really a refinement of end-to-end.