I have been pondering for some time what it is that actually defines excellent (rather than merely good), customer service.

If you order goods online (as so many of us do nowadays) you are often offered a 'choice' of delivery time. In practice this is often no choice at all. In the last two weeks I have had two experiences of this which were frankly poor service masquerading as good.

The first one was two weeks ago, I had ordered a mattress from the online department of a large Superstore chain. The product was to be delivered on a Saturday and they gave me a delivery 'window' 7 am to 6 pm!! In other words "Wait in all day and we'll get it to you at some stage. They even sent me a text the evening before confirming this (by which time, the lorry would already have been loaded for the following day and they should have been able to give a much better estimation of delivery times).

The other occasion was an example of over-delivery actually being poor service. Clearly under-promising then over-delivering is a key component of customer delight, but sometimes it can actually cause problems. Again, the same scenario as before but this time I was promised a delivery time of between 1 and 6 pm. Clearly this is better because I knew I was free to roam in the morning - only, not so, my phone rang at 10 am with the "Great news" that my product would be with me in 30 minutes, this despite the fact that I was out with a client because I believed I was 'Free' until early afternoon.

Here is the essential 'disconnect' in many company's Customer Service efforts, they view customer service from their own point-of-view, not the customer's. In the example I quoted, the company concerned would be running service fulfillment metrics which would have looked very impressive, they delivered AHEAD of time, which would give a big 'tick in the box' - trouble is that was not what was promised. Company's need to keep their promises, the mantra of 'under-promise and over-deliver' only holds true if the 'over' delivery is 'over' in the customer's eyes, delivering early is not enough.

Companies should develop a 'scorecard' of 'promises' kept, not surpassed, not exceeded, just kept. Keep your promises, that's really all there is to it!