Customer Service - the Dive for the Bottom

 

This has not been a sudden decline.   For many years retailers have attracted poor levels of staff partly due to their low pay rates. Training of staff has been robotic with no ‘feel’ or understanding of customer experience.  It’s all hard sell and contrived interventions that are so transparent to anyone with half a brain.   On the other hand you can get the total full on ‘customer is invisible’ attitude.  Recently I ventured into a branch of Marks and Spencer to purchase some socks; a relatively simple and pain free task.  I took my selection to the pay desk where two lady servers were engrossed in one of those familiar, ‘he said and then she said’ conversations.   I managed to complete the transaction, pick up my goods and leave without the server speaking to me at all – I was totally ignored throughout.  You have to work quite hard to ignore the customer giving you money!  What a great customer service model.  I was also treated to an experience through their ‘conversation’ which added no value or relevance to me whatsoever.

 

There remains the increasing problem with service on the technical side.  I have experienced the computer world recently trying to use one of the large chains to purchase some hardware.  I have some knowledge in this area and the information I was given was totally wrong – they were trying hard to sell me something that was quite unsuitable for me and was clearly the ‘product push’ at their end.  So my trust in the retailer is now damaged forever.  

 

It is not just the High Street where this ‘dive for the bottom’ manifests itself.  Try the customer service experience with the Banks and see how much fun that is.  Recently I was working in America and for reasons escaping understanding I was unable to use my business MasterCard issued by HSBC.  Apparently there was a problem with a number of cards which then had to be re-issued.  It takes 7 -15 days to get a new card issued in the UK, so I had no chance in America.  I was actually working with a card company in the US who thought that the British response was ‘unbelievable’.  Their attitude was ‘overnight a card – that is what we do.  You simply cannot leave the customer with the problem’.  Well, according to HSBC you can  - albeit I got plenty of apologetic emails they simply couldn’t overnight a card to me as ‘their processes don’t allow that to happen’.  So it is all about process and not at all about the customer.   I finally got my new card but long after I had returned from the US and in the meantime had to use my personal cards to get through my cash strapped problems.   Apart from HSBC being very apologetic they kept solidly to their ‘process’ which in no way came anywhere near satisfying a loyal customer.  I am sure that the people who dealt with me could see things from my side and I am also certain that they did ‘all they could’ at their end to fix the problem.  The issue is that for big companies the person who faces off to the customer is totally disenfranchised and powerless to make any changes or to be trusted to bypass the system to help a stranded customer.  The smart new entrepreneurial companies would have that one solved in a heartbeat.  There lies the hub of the problem.  

 

Senior managers and the powerful seldom come out of their offices to the sharp end of the business to experience what it is like for a customer.  They are too busy in meetings about everything else apart from customer service.  If ‘customer service’ is a critical component of the value proposition how much time do senior people allocate to this on  a daily or monthly basis?  How often does it appear on a Board Agenda?  Probably never or very seldom would be the truth.  If it matters – and I think that customer service does matter – then senior people need to be spending time on it.  And that doesn’t mean spending time reading worthless reports telling them ratios of complaints or other associated factors – it does mean getting to the very front of the business at the point of delivery of the service.  That is not anywhere near their offices on the umpteenth floor of some soulless building in London.

 

If the banks were at the front end of customer service then companies like Disney would be recruiting from them, or at least they would be sending delegations to observe the new customer service phenomenon.   I haven’t checked but I would wager that this is not happening.  Recently I was speaking to a senior executive of one of the banks in London about this very issue.  He agreed with me that their customer service offer was poor and that they were recruiting someone from another bank to head it up.  I said, ‘On the customer service league the banks are really 4th division.  They are all as mediocre as each other and take pride in that they are no worse than anyone else.  Why don’t you recruit a team from Disney or the like to create a real customer service culture and project you into a whole different league?’  It was as if I had suggested he should throw himself in front of a fast train!

 

There is no question in my mind that customer service can be a real differentiator in most businesses.  Unless you have the spectacular luck of running an unregulated monopoly then competition will certainly require you to challenge your customer service model.  Of course customer service has a lot of process built into it.  It cannot be simply random or ad hoc.  For many companies when things are going fine the customer service model works efficiently.  However, it is when things are not fine or there is a glitch in the system that it gets tested.  It is the ability to recover from errors or to be able to deal with problems and matters causing dissatisfaction which is the real differentiator of customer service.  We know that customers defect and there are many reasons for this.  It can be dissatisfaction with the product itself.  However, in many instances it is the ‘moment of truth’ where the customer service model meets the customer that matter.  This is the opportunity for you to ‘delight the customer’, who can be most forgiving provided the customer can see that you are going the extra mile to put the situation right.   Telling the customer how your process works or what rules you have imposed upon yourself is totally unhelpful and just irritates the customer even more.  Turn that round and I will guarantee you will get even more business as a result.  This is when a customer service mindset overrides inflexible processes and wins out every time.  Acquiring a customer service mindset is another challenge entirely.  This is not downloadable from a website – this is about changing the hearts and minds of everyone in the organisation. Who leads the customer service model – why, the Chief Executive of course.   I’ll bet that isn’t in the job description.  I’ll finish on that thought.