In providing a service, the art of delivery is just as important as the actual service itself. If Amazon shipped all its products in a cheap crumpled up box, its stocks would plummet, regardless of how good the product was. You want the whole buying process – from browsing the website, the shipping and the delivery – to be as high quality as possible. This is where Amazon beats other companies, with its lightning fast delivery times, comprehensive catalogue, and strong customer support, making Jeff Bezos the richest man in the world.

This applies to other domains. Over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed that the best doctors aren’t the smartest ones, the kindest ones, nor the most empathetic ones. They are the ones that make the patient feel like that doctor is the smartest one, the nicest one and the most empathetic one. And when a patient feels this way, they’re more likely to listen closely, take their medications and get better.

You can be smart, but fail to articulate your words clearly, thereby making you seem dumb. You can be kind, but say something the wrong way, thereby making you seem rude. You can be the most empathetic person in the world, taking on all the burden and guilt of the speaker, but forget to acknowledge them, thereby making you appear seem cold. And this matters a great deal, because as Maya Angelou put it,

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

In the world of business, this is where marketing comes in. Does your brand appear trustworthy? Legitimate? Able to succeed? Billions of dollars are thrown into making people say “yes” to these questions because a good company image drives consumer spending.

The importance is not lost in human interactions. Your tone, eye contact, body language and clarity of speech can make the difference between being a hopeless or talented doctor; a trustworthy or unreliable colleague; a wonderful or bad friend. If someone’s perceptions of you matter at all, then your delivery matters a great deal, for this drives how you make them feel.

And how you make someone feel, I would argue, drives everything else.