Following a positive customer experience, three quarters of respondents would be more loyal, 71% would recommend a company to others, 44% would use the company more frequently, and one third would be prepared to spend more money with the company.

Source: Brand-e.biz

Leading high street chain WH Smith has found itself bottom of the high street customer satisfaction league table, despite pre-tax profits reaching £69m at the end of February.

What does it feel like when they are running well? How will they react to disruptions to their race plan? What will it feel like when they successfully achieve their goal? They have a very clear picture of what they have to do to be the best they can be.

In contrast, how often do we hear leaders of organisations proclaiming their vision of giving world class customer service? Yet the rhetoric often lacks clarity. What do they mean by ‘world class’ customer service? What about your staff? Are they able to visualise this world class service? Too often it is not clear to them what they have to do to match the level of service delivered by their equivalent of Usain Bolt? They can’t share the dream.

British Cycling produces world class teams. They KNOW what world class looks like. Their coaches have already identified what level of performance their track endurance teams will need to achieve, lap by lap, to win the gold medal at the Olympics in Rio. There is no ambiguity because they have performance data for each of their athletes to work from. This means they can make informed decisions about the training they need to do achieve a gold medal.

These coaches are professionals; they spend many hours a week working with their teams to help them give their best. No stone is left unturned to find improvement. Everyone in the team has absolute clarity of their role, what is expected of them and they know how well they are performing in that role. Everyone in the team including coaches, support staff and athletes is given support to ensure they can do their best to put their team on the top step of the podium.

If the proclaimed ambition of your leaders is gold medal winning customer service then you too will need to work like world class coaches in order to turn their vision into reality. As customer service professionals, with teams to lead, do you really KNOW what it means to achieve world class service for your customers? What do you need to do now to help your team visualise being the best they can be?

This week’s blog was submitted by guest blogger, Dave Bradley: Professional Management Speaker
Dave’s latest keynote presentation ‘Engage the engine room’ expands these themes by encouraging organisations to make extraordinary line managers, team leaders and supervisors.

Dave is a TISSE assessor with CSN and a Qualified Customer Service Trainer
In his spare time Dave is also a British Triathlon Coach

dave@davebradleyspeaker.com
07751267476

Compiled by milliner Tracy Rose and her husband Russell, the new edition of Fashion Fabulous London, the third in the series, reveals a surprisingly low score for the Italian brand.

On her visit to the store, where luxury goods come with large price tags, Ms Rose struggled to find assistance; waiting for five minutes after the security guard paged someone to attend to her needs. She writes: “Once there, it seemed that the sales assistant had problems with person recognition, or maybe that she had come off a trance training course.”

One of a dozen stores and concessions that the brand has in the capital, the Bond Street boutique was praised for its “cool mint green and modern geometric décor”, helping the 100-year-old brand pick up full marks for ‘wow factor’ and ‘choice’ on the Roses’ shopping bag scale, which the brand’s head Miuccia Prada will surely be reassured to learn. Ms Prada is known in fashion circles as a visionary – often inspiring the mood of a season with her work. The designer was unavailable for comment.

Instead of setting trends, however, Primark is known for creating copy-cat versions of designer clothes and sell them at prices that are a tiny fraction of those of the real thing.

Huge volumes of orders ensure a healthy profit from the unfeasibly cheap clothes, as does outsourced production to factories such as that in Bangladesh which collapsed last month, killing over 1,000 workers. Although Primark is a member of the Ethical Trading Initiative, the low prices of its garments continues to cause controversy.

In her review of the womenswear department of the 80,000 square foot Oxford Street store, which opened last September, Ms Rose found service at the till “actually very friendly”, causing the service rating to be doubled.

Stores are notoriously messy, thanks to the pile-them-high, sell-them-cheap business model, but the Roses do not mention this in their review.

While the service style may vary between different brands and sizes of store, the Roses, who carried out reviews of the 200 featured shops themselves, believe that good service speaks for itself and they judge it accordingly, visiting independent retailers, boutiques and vintage stores.

Source: The Independent

The advisor was clearly new in the role and a little inexperienced and was being told not to do something the way she had done it as it wasn’t the ‘right thing to do’. The supervisor was busy and spent about thirty seconds barking this out and then walked away. Clearly the individual was someone perturbed by this and I could see they were getting upset.

I walked over and asked whether everything was ok…she said not. I then got the more detailed explanation of what had gone on..she was three weeks into the job, little training and felt very vulnerable on the shop floor in front of customers especially when they asked her questions…her final response before walking off was.. ’all they do in this place is tell you off and tell you what you shouldn’t do’.

How many times as a customer have you seen this happen…angry supervisor dispensing harsh word and then walking off! Snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory….end result two frustrated people and me watching on forming a view of what that company must be like to work for and whether to do business with them.

Why don’t organisations coach their managers to deal with situations like this effectively and ensure this is treated as an opportunity to train the individual and improve the customer experience….that way they could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat! Back in 551BC a famous philosopher spotted its importance and once said ‘tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I’ll remember, involve me and I’ll understand’….we seem to have forgotten the power of this and the positive impact it can have on your customer service scores.

It’s all about how things are dealt with not the issue at hand…in this case clearly the lady concerned had caused a customer to complain yet the supervisor felt comfortable with ‘telling her off’ but forgot to show her how she should do things differently next time. If only he had involved her more in the solution and ensured she was in a better position to deal with the same query again…no doubt this incident will be repeated a number of times in that shop….not good for either party or the bottom line of the business. At the end of the day great customer service starts with generating the right culture and behaviours in your people…evidence suggests ‘telling’ doesn’t get you very far !!

And another example that raises that question of customer service – US style v the more reserved British way.

This morning I ordered a drink and paid for it. Then the barista who didn’t take the order but was making the drink realised they didn’t have the coffee I asked for (they had run out) or the right cup to put it in (the dishwasher was broken).

The girl was distraught. She couldn’t apologise enough and was genuinely upset. I reassured her that it wasn’t a problem. That I wouldn’t take my custom elsewhere because of it.

It only made her feel slightly better. Clearly she wasn’t able to let it go that easily. She bought my [different]drink over, drew an imaginary circle around my face and said “I’ll remember this face, and the next time you come in, your drink’s on us”.

She said this is a very strong American or Canadian (I didn’t ask) accent. We were in Nottingham.

I’m sure many people I know would have thought her initial dismay, and her subsequent service recovery to be OTT. To be too “in your face” literally and unnatural. In fact, I don’t think she could have been more natural if she had tried. Personally, I loved it.

She was sincere and clearly saw her job as making them happy. When she couldn’t do this, she wanted to find a way to make things better. In short, she cared and wasn’t afraid to show it.

Would someone from the UK have carried it off? I don’t think they would have tried. It wouldn’t be natural and it would probably show. But it wouldn’t hurt to try and move in that direction. I’m sick of hearing stories of people paying for fuel, or buying goods from a shop where the cashier or assistant says little, or in some cases nothing at all.

Places where you have to go to the self-service tills if you want a bit of dialogue. Even “unexpected item in bagging area” is better than silence if its conversation you are after!

In the coffee shop, the North American girls demeanour is rubbing off. The other staff are becoming more polite and starting to engage with customers. It’s a start. But will it ever be anything more than this.

Or will an exuberant and passionate manner always be viewed in a slightly negative and sceptical way?

Steve Curin tackled the question on his blog this week. He was interrupted during a presentation in New York where he was asked “what if you don’t want the cashier to be phony? And to act like your friend? What is you just want to get the heck outta there?”

He answered it by saying “it bothers me whenever genuinely enthusiastic service providers are labeled as ‘phony’ or ‘goody-goodies’ or worse. Instead of their passion and enthusiasm being seen as sincere, it’s viewed with suspicion—as an ‘act’—to earn a bigger tip, get mentioned by name on a comment card or online survey, or gain favour with management.

There’s nothing phony about genuinely serving others. Exceptional customer service is not about masking your true feelings. It’s about actualizing them.”

You can read the whole piece here http://www.stevecurtin.com/blog/2013/03/22/never-apologize-for-your-enthusiasm/

As for the person who interrupted, if he doesn’t want a friendly dialogue and just wants to get the heck outta there, I suggest he comes to the UK and buys some fuel.

According to recent research*, 71% of online consumers expect help within 5 minutes of encountering an issue while trying to complete a purchase. If your business isn’t there to assist the customer within that time-frame, it is likely that they will abandon their purchase. Virgin Atlantic recognised that by engaging with customers at the point that they are experiencing difficulty, they can improve the customer experience and increase sales.

Watch this short video to learn more about how Virgin Atlantic is delivering exceptional customer service by using LivePerson. You’ll also have the opportunity to download the Intelligent Online Engagement for Customer Service white paper to understand how LivePerson can help your business.

* Connecting With Customers Report, Loudhouse Research, 2013

Source: Virgin Atlantic

And do you know what. I believe them.

A few weeks ago there was a problem with my home broadband, and when I called there was a clear message saying that the issue was in the area and rather than waste my time talking to someone, they were fixing it and I should try again in an hour. I tried again ten minutes later, I’m not blessed with enourmous amounts of patience, and it was working.

Why am I telling you this you might ask? Aren’t good news stories boring? Don’t we just want to talk about when things go wrong?

Well, we do. And I will. But the examples above demonstrate far more than just good customer service, dare I say, great customer service.

They tell me that, no matter how bad your customer service is, there is hope and it can get better. I know this because when I became a customer of this organisation I had an altogether different experience.

Contrast the friendly email, and the helpful, informative answer machine message with this.

• Sixteen (16) weeks to install.
• Thirteen (yes, that was 13) different boxes.
• Two dishes, countless cables.
• Twelve different engineers, each who told me a different story and blamed another part of the operation.
• Eight and a half hours of phone calls.
• Twenty nine emails.

In the end, I had my own personal trouble-shooter, a lovely lady from Glasgow for whom I had a direct number and email address should I have an issue. Although I ordered the product in August, it was the following February before I had to start paying due to the compensation they had to pay.

This happened six years ago. How times change.

If you are an organisation who, how shall we put it?, has some work to do on your customer service delivery then the above story should be all the encouragement you need.
No-one said delivering excellent customer service was easy. No-one said it happened overnight.
It’s a journey and sometimes a long and hard one. But if you had told me six years ago I would still be a customer of the company above, and singing their praises on a blog I would have said “what’s a blog?”

Then I would have laughed. And said I didn’t think so. But it just goes to show what can happen and what can be achieved with the right focus, effort, people, resources, commitment, determination and of course, motivation.

Because that’s the difference between an organisation that can adapt and change and understands what its customers want. And one that doesn’t.

A spokesman for TICSI said:

“Our objective of creating a ‘virtual home’ that will have a huge impact on individual and business performance has been widely received by business leaders, customer service professionals and experts, members of various organisations and individuals around the world.

At launch, Home of Service will feature more than 10,000 articles and links on the site – making it the single largest repository of customer service related instructional materials and recommended readings on the web.

Home of Service members can follow their friends, colleagues and peers; create and join communities based around their area of expertise; learn and share their knowledge with each other; jobseekers can look for suitable jobs; employers can post vacancies; members can attend webinars and online conferences; and they can also get discounts on products and services advertised in the online mall.”

To sign up please go to:

http://www.homeofservice.com/

Your email address will be recorded in the database and closer to the planned launch, you will receive an update of how to register fully and enjoy the numerous benefits of being a member of Home of Service.

Just recently I have started to do a bit of coffee-shop watching too.

You see I’m far from a connoisseur when it comes to coffee. Anything will do. Mine is so full of milk, sugar or syrup that I wouldn’t know a Guatemalan bean from a Kenyan one. But what I have seen is a difference in the levels of customer service you get from different high street brands.

I won’t name them, you can probably take a guess from your own experiences, but one particular brand has really stepped up in the personal customer service stakes.

Whenever I walk in to one of their shops, I am greeted. I am engaged in conversation at the till. They show interest, whether its genuine or not, they show it anyway.

When I leave the shop, I am thanked for my custom and told they are looking forward to seeing me again.

When they were unable to give me what I asked for the other day, I got a free coffee on the house instead. Rather than a “sorry we don’t have that” and a shrug.

It does sound very American, I know. But I have always liked that approach anyway and interestingly, the great service I’m talking about is from one of the coffee shop brands that doesn’t originate in the US.

But the big question has to be “does it makes difference?”. To me it does. And I can measure this in real terms, because consciously and sub-consciously, I’ve actually started using their shops much more than the others. I’m doing it because I like being made to feel welcome. And I like the little bit of chat, of friendliness and helpfulness. I like to think that they will go out of their way to look after me, and I have a problem, they will go that extra mile to sort it.

And in turn, I have found I am prepared to walk that little bit further and sometimes pay a little bit more for the privilege.

Its not scientific, but if I’m looking for more evidence to support the difference it makes, this particular brand started with two shops in my city centre. Now it has six. The other brands have reduced the number of shops they have. Co-incidence?

I am not saying the others are terrible. It’s just not consistent,. There are little pockets of great practice but usually from individuals who happen to be great with people. But its not something that they do as a company. It’s not cultural, it doesn’t happen in every shop. It’s all a bit and miss.

With coffee costing around three pounds these days, and lots of people wanting to drink it, there’s a lot of competition on the high street these days and of course a great product matters, so taste will always be important. But it’s not the only thing that matters.

Next time you are in a coffee shop, judge it for yourself.

Have a nice day!