Following in the footsteps of my pioneering Great Uncle, Sir Cecil Denny Bt, the founder of the city of Calgary, I too set out to make a life in Canada. Whilst I was not an original Mountie and was not responsible for founding a major city, in my own way I made an impression through my involvement in the music business. I returned to the UK this year to take up a position as CEO with the Richard Denny Group having spent many years living and working in North America. Both places are dear to my heart but one cannot help making comparisons from time to time….
I was struck recently when watching the new TV ad campaign from Enterprise Rent A Car… by their tagline, ‘ with US customer service, we’ll pick you up ‘.. What stood out was the emphasis on ‘with US customer service’…why should this be such a feature and differentiator? I accept that for the most part, the UK is not known for its customer service, the needs of the consumer seem often times secondary to the wants of the service provider. Too often we are told what a company or individual ‘cannot do’ rather than a focus on what they ‘can’ do for you. How often are you pushed around from one department to another in a culture of blame and unwillingness to take responsibility for the issue you have raised? In France or Italy for example, the food service industry is full of proud ‘professionals’ whose pleasure it is to serve you. They take pride from their work. I struggle to say the same about restaurant service in this country, or for that matter 90% of ‘service provision’ in general.
In considering why this might be, I cannot help but conclude that the British class system lies behind the apparent unwillingness to provide good, simple, considered service. A fear that to ‘serve’ suggests you are subordinate or of a lower order than the one you serve. This may seem a somewhat generalized statement, but I make it based on my own experiences of received service between North America and the UK. The fact that a global company such as Enterprise chooses to feature US customer service as a point of difference in its UK advertising, to me suggests that the gap between UK and US customer service is such, that it is worth making a feature out of… a selling point! I would go further and say that the gap is more likened to a chasm.
As a business, providing good service should be at the forefront of our growth strategies. The customer experience is everything, and developing personal, ‘emotional’ relationships is a way to retain existing customers and acquire others. How many times have you been told by friends about a nasty experience with a business? Wouldn’t it be great if every customer became an ambassador for the business rather than a hater…these days there is vast choice between providers and whilst the recession causes many companies to drive down their prices to be competitive, I know I wouldn’t mind spending a couple more pence if the buying experience was wonderful and I felt ‘cared for’.
It is critical that we recognize that we are in the age of the consumer. The customer holds the power and it is they who ‘buy’, rather than be ‘sold to’. The Enterprise Rent A Car TV ad should be a wake up call to all of us service providers to take a step back and ask ourselves if we really have the customer at the heart of what we do, or do we simply pay lip service to that notion. Do we as employers, provide adequate training in customer service and more importantly, do we invest and train those managers tasked with leading CSR’s to ensure they know how to lead good consistent service teams?
It doesn’t matter to me whether you run a small café in the middle of nowhere or British Telecom, good service is now a critical part of the customer expectation and it is incumbent upon us all therefore to set aside our insecurities around our class, take responsibility for our job roles, adopt an egalitarian approach and do everything we can to ensure our customers have the best possible experience when dealing with us. Our frontline people are ‘our company’ and how they deal with anyone reflects our corporate culture and how we view our consumers.
Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.’ Peter Drucker
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