Customer Service

When I'm asked how organisations can create devoted customers, I reply "just keep doing great things to them". It seesm obvious, but creating 'devoted' customers is about consistently doing things that make customers feel valued.

How could a project as high-profile and important as the opening of Heathrow airport's new Terminal Five have gone so disastrously awry at such a sensitive moment? Robert Heller dissects the fiasco.

Knowing who its customers are is the foundation for any successful organisation. And as the US Federal Aviation Administration has demonstrated, getting this wrong can be disastrous.

With British Airways reeling from one of the biggest corporate PR disasters in history, it's worth mentioning just how much impact social media had on the Terminal 5 catastrophe.

I received a handwritten postcard recently from a supplier of mine last week. It had a real impact on me and reminded me that sometime, doing things the old way is a great way to stand out from the crowd.

January is traditionally the time for New Year Resolutions. But instead, here are 10 ideas for New Year Revolutions - simple things that can help revolutionize your approach to your customers in 2008.

Many organisations are quick to act when things go wrong. But what about when things go well? Given the importance to staff of praise and recognition, why is customer praise not handled with the same energy as customer complaints?

Mike's job in a financial institution is to handle complaints about miss-selling – and he's worried by the number of unhappy customers who contact him every day. But his bosses won't face up to the problem. Andy Hanselman offers some advice.

If you're looking for that ground breaking, market changing new idea, you need to think big, right? Well, not necessarily. The biggest advances often come from focusing on the smallest things.

When a customer brings a complaint to our attention we have a choice. We can be arrogant and pigheaded, or we can listen carefully - and, if necessary, apologize and make it right.

The customer may always be right, but the increasingly demanding nature of many customers is creating real headaches for managers.

Tying customers into your business has huge benefits, but only if it's their choice. The best businesses aren't just easy to buy from, they ought to be easy to walk away from, too. In the long run, keeping customers locked in against their will is no good for anybody.

Have you ever been blindsided by changes in your customers' behavior? These shifts may happen gradually or literally overnight. Either way, they can destroy a business unless you take steps to ensure that they don't.

The attitude of many businesses towards customers is all about consistency. Consistent mediocrity, that is. It's "aim low, reach your goals, avoid disappointment". And by focusing on minimum standards, they become the norm. The only way to break this habit is to break the rules.

In my recent column on this site, I blasted a rather large software company for providing crappy customer service via their "email only" policy. So it only seems fair that I should priase ones that get it right.

I'm up to my eyeballs with frustration at the direction many companies are taking with "e-mail only" customer service. It has reached the point where I will no longer do business with companies that won't talk with their paying customers.

Thanks to the Internet, customers are demanding more, questioning more and talking more. This word of mouse is great news for organisations that deliver, but very bad news for those that do not.

British Airways' decision to charge many of its customers as much as £240 extra for checking in two or more bags makes it increasingly hard to escape the conclusion that the company is hellbent on committing corporate suicide.

It's a long-standing axiom that the customer is always right. But is it true? No. But since customers make the purchase decisions, they'll always have the last word.

New reesarch has confirmed that customer service work can be bad for psychological health, regardless of whether it is face-to face or over the phone.

December is when many retailers make a huge chunk of their annual sales. But with this month-long surge in customers overtaxing even the best employees, what can be done to make the shopping season more enjoyable for all?

With Christmas on the horizon and the retail rush beginning, U.S. researchers have warned that a customer service meltdown is on the horizon as the generational gap between shoppers and retail staff widens.

Creating competitive advantage by providing extra services that customers actually value rather than trying to extract every penny from them seems a simple strategy. It's amazing so many organisations don't get it.

Public trust in institutions and companies is declining - and no wonder. Yet far too many companies still don't understand that if they want to attract and keep their customers, building trust is vital.

Resolving complaints is easy when trust exists. Yet many efforts at resolving complaints fail for one primary reason, namely fear. When our natural fear of losing something or not getting something we want takes over our brain, our ability to understand another person's perspective usually goes out the window.

The battle between sales and marketing reflects a grave failure to manage effectively. Because if the two don't pull together for successful business development, the bottom line will be destroyed by the errors at the top.

Far too many organisations take the attitude with their customers: "when things go well please tell us; when they don't, then don't bother".

As Simon Caulkin quite rightly points out in a great piece in the Observer last Sunday, the reason that organisations continue to treat their customers with contempt is largely because customer value is a wasting asset.

It's all very well aiming to delight your customers by exceeding their expectations, but what if their expectations were low in the first place? It might be better, then, to focus on their experience rather than their expectations.

Pension firms and investment managers have overtaken estate agents, politicians and even traffic wardens to earn the ignominious accolade as the least trusted profession in Britain, according to new consumer research.

Any business that encourages (or even allows) customer service reps to do nothing more than read from a prepared script is demonstrating little more than contempt for their customers.

When our shopping experience is negative, statistics show it takes only two such incidents and we're likely to shop elsewhere. That's not a lot of wiggle room. Think of it as "two strikes and you're out."

The next 15 years will see knowledge workers become organisations most valuable source of competitive advantage as an ageing population and the eastwards shift of economic power bring profound changes to the global economy.

If 100 people have a bad shopping experience, a retailer stands to lose between 32 and 36 current or potential customers, according to the Retail Customer Dissatisfaction Study 2006.

British mobile phone operators are stinging GPRS and 3G users with extortionate roaming charges when they are abroad of up to £20 a megabyte – that's up to £100 (more than $50)for a single iTunes download, and up to £5 just to check your tariff.

Britain's 24/7 'always-on' culture has transformed the habits of consumers but failed to erode demand for traditional service values, according to new research.

While many customers say they are concerned about banks setting up call centres and processing operations in offshore locations, very few have bothered to find out more about their own bank's position.

The chaos that has engulfed British Airways as a result of a dispute involving its catering supplier, Gate Gourmet, can be traced all the way back to the airline's efficiency drive which has seen 13,000 jobs cut and £700m shaved from its costs, according to Michael Harrison in the Independent.

As if most of us needed to be reminded, poor customer service is the main reason that consumers switch service providers, while new technology has done nothing to improve the customer experience.

A new survey of senior executives across the globe has revealed an increasing focus on workforce issues, with attracting and retaining skilled staff and getting the best out of their people dominating the list of priorities.

The inability to apologise for incompetence is symptomatic of the culture of contempt the infects many organisations. Just look at the farce that was last weekend's U.S. Grand Prix. Contempt ruins organisations – only humility and appreciation will save the day. Just don't expect the contemptuous to act on that advice in a hurry.

The caricature of the Briton abroad as someone who simply speaks louder when he wants to make himself understood may no longer hold true.

It costs much less to keep an existing customer than it does to acquire a new one. So you would think that acutely listening to customer needs is paramount for all companies, right?

Incompetent managers who fail to interact and guide their teams in their day-to-day roles are the major cause of Britain's culture of poor customer service, according to a new report.

A third of consumers in the UK would ditch their financial services providers if they knew that they had re-located their call centres offshore, according to new research.

"The only way companies will keep their customers (and their revenues) is if they can keep their customers happy." It seems stunningly obvious. But so many organisations forget it.

Telecoms company NTL, which last month was won the dubious accolade of being the UK's second worst firm for customer service, seems to be living up to its reputation after a recorded message on its complaints line was changed to include a torrent of abuse.

Employees in UK PLC are keen to deliver excellent customer service but are let down by a lack of support from their bosses, a new report has found, with utilities companies emerging as the worst on almost all counts.

If you thought that Britain's 'open all hours' society has gone far enough, think again. By the year 2020 a quarter of Britain's population will be operating in a 24/7 culture, a new report suggests.

An undercover investigation by The Sunday Times has shown that Britain’s mounting incapacity benefit bill is being fuelled by jobcentre staff.

You’ve heard that the customer is always right. You may or may not agree with that statement, but everyone ought to agree that customers hold a very important place in our lives.

Companies that offshore their call centre operations to India and elsewhere risk loosing more revenue through customers deserting them than they save in reduced operating costs.

Call centres in the UK will recruit an extra 200,000 workers over the next three years, taking the number of people employed in the sector to more than one million, a government report has predicted.

Better safeguards need to be put in place to protect the growing volume of personal and financial data on UK consumers held in offshore call centres, according to a group of British Euro MPs.

Co-operative Financial Service, which owns Co-operative Bank and Co-operative Insurance Society, is the latest company to announce that it will not be offshoring call centre jobs but plans instead to create 500 jobs in the UK.

A call centre opened by a UK retailer in India is to close and its jobs returned to Britain because its level of customer service is not up to scratch.

Just days after new research suggested that UK call centres deliver better customer satisfaction than their offshore counterparts, the Abbey National bank and Axa Insurance have both announced plans to transfer customer service and back office staff to India

As new research suggests that UK call centres deliver better customer satisfaction, the Nationwide building society has announced it will be expanding its centres in the UK rather than switching jobs abroad.

Is it something in the air or something in the soup? Whatever it is, there seems to be a growing gap in levels of customer service. My shopping experience this weekend adds to the growing body of evidence.

The UK's largest insurance company, Aviva, is cutting more than 2,300 call-centre and office jobs and moving them to India to save costs.