By Oluwole Dada
Avoid Waiting Times
This conversation started from last week but there is a need to reiterate it. Do all you can to eradicate your customers’ waiting period. Every minute a customer waits unnecessarily is a minute your competitor is looking more attractive. A full waiting room is not evidence of success. It is evidence of a capacity or process problem that, if left unresolved, will erode the loyalty you worked hard to build.
There is a hospital I know, and I suspect you may know one like it. Patients arrive for a scheduled appointment and sit for three, sometimes four hours before a doctor sees them. The physical facility is modern. The equipment is reasonably current. The doctors are competent. However, the experience of waiting without acknowledgement, without anyone coming to say I see you, we know you are here, strips all of that investment of its value. The patient does not leave thinking about the quality of the diagnosis. They leave thinking about those hours of long wait. That is what they tell their family. That is the story that travels.
The Cleveland Clinic, ranked consistently among the top hospitals in the United States, built an entire operational philosophy around this insight. Under the leadership of Dr. Toby Cosgrove, they restructured their patient experience model to address not just clinical outcomes, but the emotional experience of care. They embedded patient experience officers across wards, redesigned waiting areas to communicate respect for the patient’s time and trained all staff from surgeons to porters to treat every interaction as a moment of care.
Patient satisfaction scores improved dramatically, and the Clinic’s reputation as a destination for complex medical care was strengthened not just by its clinical excellence, but by how people felt when they were there. The lesson for every service leader is this: the waiting experience is not an administrative problem. It is a brand problem. And it belongs on the agenda of every department head, not just the operations team.
Quality Is the Original Competitive Advantage
The most durable competitive advantage in any service business is not price. It is not location. It is not even brand recognition. It is the consistent, reliable, and non-negotiable quality that the customer can count on every single time they engage with you or your business.
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company is a strong corporate illustration of this principle in the global hospitality industry. Their service model is built around a laminated card known as credo card that every employee carries in his pocket. This serves as a daily reminder that the genuine care and comfort of guests is the highest mission. Every staff member, from the general manager to the housekeeping team, is empowered to spend up to $2,000 to resolve a guest complaint without seeking management approval. The result is a brand that commands premium pricing in every market it operates, not because of its marketing budget, but because of its reputation for quality. That reputation was earned one interaction at a time.
You may not have the budget of the Ritz-Carlton. However, you have the same fundamental tool: the decision, made daily, to deliver what you promised at the standard your customers deserve. That decision costs you nothing but it will be worth everything. Every service provider must sit down and honestly assess the quality of their service delivery. This is not the quality you aspire to but the quality your customers are actually experiencing right now. The gap between those two things is where your work begins.
Your People Are Your Product
Another layer to this conversation on improving your competitive advantage is something that is routinely underestimated. Unfortunately, it seems to be the most decisive variable in the entire customer experience equation. It is your people. Nothing happens without them. Your technology is not the most important neither is it your premises or your pricing structure but your people. The ones who answer the phone. The ones who stand at the counter. The ones who walk the floor. The ones whose faces a customer sees first and whose words a customer remembers last. They are, in every meaningful sense, your brand.
When the last time you thought seriously about the first person a customer encounters when they engage with your business?
It is definitely not the CEO, and not the head of marketing. Neither is it the product team. It is the receptionist., the security officer at the gate, the call center agent but they are the least invested in, the least trained, and the least recognized.
That is one of the most expensive miscalculations a service business can make.
Oluwole Dada is the General Manager at SecureID Limited, Africa’s largest smart card manufacturing plant in Lagos, Nigeria.
