European Customer Experience World – the premier event for Customer Experience professionals in Europe – is being held at the new Hilton Hotel, Terminal 5, Heathrow, on the 22nd-23rd May. With over 40 speakers attending, and 29 hours of content crammed into two days, ECEW features presentations from some of the biggest brands: Ford, LV, Read More…
“This morning’s story on BBC Breakfast News, about UK customers wasting five working days a year waiting on hold to get through to busy UK customer call centres, yet again stressed the need for both commercial and public sector organisations to deliver better quality customer service. Organisations listed in the ‘Worst Top 10’ can always Read More…
Apr 232012
Shabby Tesco stores are to be revamped as part of a £1billion revival plan that will include hiring an extra 8,000 staff to improve customer service. Details were revealed yesterday as Britain’s biggest retailer confirmed sales in the UK continue to show an annual fall. The company is scaling back on building large supermarkets in Read More…
Feb 292012
CSN can announce the full speaker line up for our 15 March event as… Hilary Whitaker, Service Excellence Manager, NCFE In 2005, national awarding organisation NCFE had low customer and employee satisfaction scores and very high employee turnover. Their service excellence journey has transformed the business into a Top 100 company to Work For and Read More…
Feb 102012
Welcome to latest edition of CSN’s Newsletter on all areas of customer service excellence. How to make benchmarking effective for your organisation Just how good could your organisation be? To find out, make sure you book your seat at our next event in London on 28 February. “Benchmarking Your Organisation” will give you the insight Read More…
Yesterday, Mary Portas, Queen of Shops, issued her report on the future UK high street. Countless news programmes and radio phone-ins debated what she said and in amongst the opinions, agreeing and disagreeing with her ideas, one of the callers made a really important point. Or rather, they asked a really significant question: “Is shopping on Read More…
Report by Paul Sawers is UK & Media Editor at The Next Web. Regulator Ofcom has released its latest report, highlighting the best and worst of customer service across the various UK communications industries. Thousands of consumers were interviewed in September this year, and they were each asked to rate their experiences of the different companies’ customers Read More…
Nov 202011
UK businesses face £2bn war for customers 17 NOVEMBER 2011 UK firms fear losing 10% of their customer base over the next three years, at a cost of almost £2.25bn, a study by the Institute of Customer Service (ICS) reveals. As cash-strapped customers spend less and shop around more amid continuing economic turmoil, business leaders Read More…
Yesterday I spoke to my brother-in-law, who had a question about installing a new 3D TV he had just purchased. During the conversation he relayed the experience he had encountered during the decision process. It makes for, in my opinion, interesting reading on how customer service can differ so greatly. He lives in Nottingham, and Read More…
I read an article today that said “Complaints are good. Complaints, or the lack of them, can be used to measure customer satisfaction”. Really? I think this is a sentence of two halves – to use the football commentator’s analogy – and the second half is not good. I totally agree that complaints are good. Read More…
CSN’s “How to get the best from your people” networking event won the seal of approval from its delegates – with 100% rating the day as “good or excellent”. Speakers at the London event included Tim Hadfield from Britannia Building Society who presented a Best Places to Work case study and Adam Truelove from Forest Read More…
Leading providers of customer interaction software, eGain, are sponsoring CSN’s Annual Conference in London on 16 November. UK customer service experts will be stating “The Business Case for Service Excellence” – showing organisations how they can boost their bottom line, even in these challenging times. Andrew McMillan – who led the John Lewis customer service Read More…
The energy regulator Ofgem has fined Npower £2m for failing to handle complaints properly. Ofgem said Npower had not recorded complaints properly or given dissatisfied complainers details of the Energy Ombudsman’s redress service. It added that Npower had now remedied all of the breaches of the regulations for which it was fined. A spokesman for Read More…
Oct 282011
Do organisations really want to their customer service to be excellent? At a recent workshop with around 20 different UK organisations, I read some lines from their websites. All but one of them claimed that they ‘wanted to be excellent’ although not all in the same way – but the word excellent was still used. Read More…
He was a devil to work with and he was right there in the details. No other chief executive of a corporation Apple’s size operated like Steve Jobs did. It was common, as news of his death sank in yesterday, to pay tribute to his visionary leadership. But it might not be this high-level guidance Read More…
National Customer Service Week is an opportunity to raise awareness of customer service and the vital role it plays in successful business practice and the growth of the UK economy. Don’t forget to vote in our poll. How will social media effect the delivery of customer service?
Sep 272011
CSN’s new-look website is now live – why not check it out? It’s been improved to help you on your journey to service excellence. A really simple step-by-step guide takes visitors through each stage of the journey – from customer surveys to benchmarking. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re at the start or have already set Read More…
Customer Service Network (CSN) has been chosen by Home Group, a major UK affordable housing organisation, to join them on their journey to customer service excellence. Home Group is partnering with CSN to deliver a customer service improvement programme. CSN will be making 1,500 calls per month to customers about repairs, complaints, gas servicing and Read More…
Sep 272011
John Hughes, Managing Director of CSN, will be leading the debate on the relationship between customer service and quality at a national conference. He will be joining Daisy McAndrew, Economics Editor at ITN news on the panel at the Chartered Quality Institute Conference 2011 on 30 November. Andrew McMillan, leader of John Lewis’s award-winning customer Read More…
Sep 262011
TalkTalk was the most complained about telephone and broadband provider in the first six months of 2011, according to telecoms regulator Ofcom. The company, which currently sponsors ITV’s The X-Factor, had more complaints about its phone service between April and June than BSkyB, BT Retail and Virgin. More of its broadband customers also complained during Read More…
Sep 192011
Retailers are seen as providing the best customer service levels in the UK, but banks, car-makers and utilities firms lag behind in this area, a study has found. Econsultancy, the insights group, surveyed 2,000 consumers in the country to gain an understanding of their experiences with companies in various industry sectors. Overall, 47% of respondents suggested that Read More…
When it comes to customer service excellence, there really is no silver bullet – the principles and practice are well laid out but there’s no single, guaranteed solution. What does make the difference is the desire to deliver it. The more I judge customer service awards, the more convinced I am. It doesn’t matter what Read More…
Poor customer service could cost UK plc £850bn by Chloe Rigby UK plc could be missing out on close to £850bn in sales because of poor customer service, according to a new study. The survey, carried out for multichannel retailer Best Buy UK, found that some 85% of consumers would go out of their way to Read More…
LONDON—U.K. gas and electricity market regulator Ofgem said Wednesday it has finedCentrica PLC’s retail unit British Gas £2.5 million ($4.1 million) for failing to properly address customer complaints. British Gas has already improved how it handles complaints. However, the regulator said in a statement “the fine is a warning from Ofgem that all energy companies must Read More…
Santander has become the latest UK company to bring its international call centres back to the UK. The bank, which has performed poorly over complaints according to the industry ombudsman, says it has made the move in order to improve customer service.
