Great customer service

Excellent Customer Service

I seem to spend most of my time these days on the wrong end of one of those calls to customer services complaining about something or other, or more often than not just trying to get the very basic level of service you would expect as a valued customer.

The other day for instance I was on the phone to Start-Rite, from whom I’d bought my daughter’s first pair of shoes; which rather unfortunately started to fall to bits two weeks after purchase. After a lengthy wait and a few attempts to talk to someone from the customer services department (which apparently they don’t have...) I finally managed to speak to someone who informed me – as an opening gambit, ‘We have no legal obligation to help you’... Now my purpose here isn’t to bash Start-Rite, who eventually managed to solve my issue. You’ll be pleased to know that I have a different and wholly more pleasant purpose.
The other day (here we go again), I found myself on the phone to Ladybird books. A brief bit of history - My sister had bought my daughter a book (Noisy Noisy Boo – it’s about monsters), which sadly didn’t make any noise (as advertised).
After 4 rings the phone was answered by an alert sounding lady. I explained my problem. She asked my name and address. ‘OK sir, we’ll put another in the post for you today.’ I nearly choked on my cornflakes!
‘What that’s it?’ I asked. ‘You don’t need me to send it back or anything?’
‘Well you can if you like sir, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t.’
Wow.
I went to the sorting office today to pick up my parcel... which had arrived the next day (when I was out). I immediately opened the parcel to give my expectant daughter her prize... and what should I find? Not one, but two books with a little hand written note apologising for the trouble and offering the second book as a free gift!
Fantastic.
Customer service is the most important thing in business. It’s the most important marketing tool. It ensures that those customers that already by into you, keep doing so. Ladybird get this and it is to their immense credit.
I’m off to a mothers group this evening and I intend to bore them all to death about how good ladybird are. My Niece is also very very likely to get a ladybird book for her birthday.
And the really good news is that in a digitally connected world, this type of strong customer service has a much more powerful effect than ever before. I’m writing about it, you’re reading it and hopefully there’ll be a few more people well disposed to ladybird than ever before.

Talking to the man - Gethuman

I was at lunch on Friday, when the conversation turned to Customer service. We talked for a while about call centre outsourcing, Orange’s decision to move their call centres back to the UK (or at least shift some customer service resource back) and First Direct and their consistently good call handling performance.

I hate call centres. I worked in one for a year with Norwich Union which, whilst I was there, got moved from the top floor, with a view of the castle, to a site overlooking a run down car park. View not withstanding, I hate call centres, being in them and calling them.

Which is why when one of the American’s around the table piped up and asked whether we’d seen get human.com was delighted to learn that I hadn’t and that it’s great.

Gethuman.com is a very simple database of every big company you’d ever want to phone, and instructions on how to get straight through to an actual human operator! Brilliant.

Now, I’ve got no idea how they keep it up to date – I can only image it being fairly labour intensive.

Behind their database there’s a ‘Gethuman Standard’, which sets out the various rules a company should adhere to in order to be user friendly (for example – The caller must always be able to dial 0 or say ‘operator’ to queue for a human).

My only initial concern is that, if the site’s not (up to date), and I need to speak to someone at Gethuman.com about it… will I get straight through? – I’ll wait to see if they come back to my e-mailed request on that one.

There are a few interesting points here.

First in a homogenous market, customer service is a key differentiating factor. Outsourcing your call centres, or making them overly reliant on recorded messaging may seem like a smart move for the bottom line, but if they start to erode your business, it’s a false economy (the Orange model).

Next it is clearly great that consumers are empowering themselves to get what they want, rather than what corporations say they want (I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been told that ‘the service has been scaled down for my convenience.’). And it’s an equally great thing that the internet allows us all to do this.

Lastly, there’s a nice little blog at the end of the site, allowing us to chip in and let them know about the service we’ve received at the hands of various corporations.

Right I’m off to talk to someone at Norwich Union (now of course Aviva), not that I need to you understand. I can though. So I’m going to.