Great customer service is like great cooking – you know it when you experience it.  I experienced it this week from my favourite supplier of white goods – #ao.com.  They delivered my order but were not able do the installation because our kitchen fitters had managed to hide all the connections behind some very solid cabinets.  It was going to need the kitchen cabinets removed, the connections altered and then the appliance finally fitted. All the ingredients of a customer disaster were there. 

What saved it was the attitude of the two installers, who despite a wasted journey, helped us work out a plan to get the problem fixed and left us feeling that this was a short-term glitch that would leave us with a better and safer outcome.  Within minutes of their leaving, we received a full credit for the installation work.  They were cheerful, creative, and thought the company they worked for was great – I know because I asked them.

I realised once again that only opinion that matters is that of your customers. Once you accept that is true then you must make sure that the people who are the first interface for your customer feel that they work for an organisation they are proud of. 

That means a company that has, or is building, a good reputation in the market. A reputation for service, for quality, for caring for its customers, for fixing their problems.  If they are not proud of their company, then they will struggle to deal day by day with all the little aggravations that cause customer problems.  Those little things need to be dealt with by people who are motivated to do their best and who have the autonomy to fix problems.  Reputation matters, both in the long term and the short term.

 Many years ago, I worked for company A, that had a terrible reputation for customer service (not all of it deserved).  We ran a benchmarking exercise against one of the most famous high street retailers (company B), who had a great reputation for customer service (not all of it deserved either). 

To our surprise what we discovered, when the complaints were analysed, was that both companies had similar numbers of complaints per 100 customers. The difference was in customer perception. Company A’s customers saw a complaint (however well it was dealt with) as just another one of a litany of complaints against a terrible company that they wanted to leave as soon as possible, Company B’s customers felt they were unlucky, it was a one off, and it would be dealt with well. They stayed loyal. 

It was all down to market reputation.