Customer Service Advice

The style of service being delivered at the front end in a business is all a reflection of the person at the top, the Q Guild Business Conference in May was told in a keynote address by Jonathan Winchester of Shoppers Anonymous.

He told the story of working in Harrods as an 18 year old, not recognising his customer but securing a £6850 sale to Diana Ross to kit out her property on an island in Sweden. Helping the customer out of the store Jonathan nervously asked “Are you going home by Tube?” only to embarrassed to arrive an a huge limousine parked at the door. Totally inappropriate claimed Jonathan but it was all part of learning about selling.

Jonathan moved to Perth, Australia where he secured a monthly mystery shopping contract and grew that business to 1000 clients measuring customer experience. On returning to the UK started doing a similar job for the likes of Booths and FARMA.

Customer service is about the perception of customers. Rule number one about delivering great service is what our customers say we cannot dismiss it. It is what it is, take it, act on it and do what is right for the customers. Not necessarily what is right for us.

Leaders and service. In a European study out of 1000 business 80% of business leaders felt that they delivered good customer service. Then the study asked their customers if they felt those businesses delivered good or better customer service. Only 8% of customers felt those businesses delivered good customer service. There is a massive perception gap between what we do and what our customers think we do. If you think you have customer service absolutely nailed, then that is the start of your problems because you will get complacent. The minute you be complacent is the minute things star going downhill.

Last year a mystery shopping survey of butchers shops in the North of Scotland revealed that only 76% of new customers said they would make this their regular butchers shop.

How to close that gap
Who is your number one customer?
Suppliers – they get a perception of your business. So you need to define a customer as anyone who has a perception of your business. So suppliers can be critical in how you look after them because they can spread negative comments. Therefore looking after suppliers can help you.
Other important customers are potential customers, paying customers, management and staff – unless the service amongst your team is right with good morale then service is not going to be right. Putting your staff central is a major part of the strategy; e.g. Booths supermarkets really engage and reward staff.

Consider Recruitment
Technical skills are important but also consider work is a performance and they need confidence.
Find out what that person did in their first seven years (upbringing, parents, experience)
Education, what did they do at school, drama, leader of a team.
Good training; the first five minutes in a job are very important and the ability to think laterally.

Five Quick Tips
1. Tension is the biggest killer of successful business. Deal with it. Often caused by people who don't want to change. Explain to staff why things need to change.
2. Ask staff how they feel about working with you. Ask .What would you do if you were me'?
3. What is your vision? They need to understand the path you want to be on. Don't just think about tomorrow.
4. Knowledge, send them on courses, good product knowledge
5. Reward and recognition is a number one requirement. When done in front of colleagues it is ten times more effective.

Where are first impressions formed?
Outside your business; what does your front door and windows say? Slide shown of 14 negative messages on doors and windows and then showed after amendments with stronger messages. Ask does a customer really know what the messages are? Only 62% of shops in the Scottish butchers survey had attractive windows.

The 'Director of First Impressions' is the first person customers meet, your floor, windows etc. Jonathan believed name badges were very important because customers will only feel it is a personal experience if they know your name. This is an easy win.

6000 staff at Harrods spend 45 minutes every week on training. Every Wednesday morning from 8.30am. Ask staff to look at your business. Walk towards your shop and write down three things that are good and look at three things that need improving. Walk in the door and do the same, look at your displays and do that again. It could be guaranteed that the list of things needing done will be longer. As the leader business owners need to take quick actions to put things right because that tells your team that you are serious about delivering a better experience. Then they will rise up and jump up a little bit more. Do it every month with your team and take a very good look at your business.

Self promotion is not well enough used. Ask your team do we promote strongly enough what differentiates you from the big multiples?

Instant win can be achieved by examining staff body language, tone of voice, and words used. Body language makes up 78% of first impressions. Tone cannot be good without good body language, what we say is small factor. When interviewing for new staff make sure you recruit people with good body language.

Attempt to build a conversation, give a big smile.
Ask open questions to identify needs; this is the only way to find out what they require. 30% of customers will know what they want. Then there is middle ground who can be tempted by tasters on the counter. Then there are 30% of customers who need help. Picking out the latter allows you to up sell. You cannot up sell to everyone but you can be sussed. Ask more questions and it is easier to sell more.

Jonathan provided post it notes and requested everyone wrote the initials PMMFS on the post it and stick it to their foreheads. PMMFS stood for please make me feel special. Every customer in your business has this stuck on their head when they walk in. This is what they want; they want to be loved. Make sure the customers goes away with a good experience.

You need to have processes in your business to create a wow solution. Identify what goes wrong in your business most often and devise a quickly implemented solution.

Feedback is the breakfast of champions.
How do you find out the bad feedback?
Ask customers two questions:
1. What do we do well, what do we do that makes you come back to our business, give me some examples of that?
2. How can we improve, if you were me what would you do to improve this business?
Ask your staff to log 20 enquiries per day to customers and that will be the best market research you can do. It is really simple.

Benefits of mystery shopping
Third party feedback – team will listen to third party advice.
Reward the team – people need to be loved.
Highlight your bug bears – things that drive you to distraction.
Terrific coaching tool – go through the feedback one to one.
Positive tool for staff – once they get their heads around it.

Very good customer service is about being consistently very good. This needs measured continually. Go away and do things differently. Doing something is 100% better than doing nothing.

Charles Darwin said:-
“The species that survived were not the most intelligent, they were the most adaptable to change.”