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Service Standard: Good Start, But Don’t Stop There

5 Oct
Misleading Customer Service Kills Your Business

Image by libraryman via Flickr

"…universal truths by which all customer service can be measured. This can’t be the case."
Frankly – that’s just plain wrong. There ARE universal truths about customer service and if the ICS audit seeks them out then it will be a step forward.
For example, I can’t for the life of me see how great customer service can be delivered by staff who hate or even just aren’t enjoying their jobs. So, if the ICS seeks to measure staff engagement this is a great precursor to ensuring client delight. Note – delight! If the objective is to deliver customer satisfaction, you’re wasting your time – and believe me you will attain your goal of delivering a mediocre service if you are a local garage or a global bank.
Firstly, hats off to any firm for going through the audit process. It means they want to improve and are seeking to benchmark their performance – THIS IS A KEY STEP! Without a benchmark you have no idea where you are on the journey. As I am not a journalist, I am not genetically prone to see the world through a more than half empty glass. I take a less cynical view and as 95% of firms don’t do anything serious to improve customer service applause to those that do.
As a consumer it’s a shame more companies don’t try harder to delight, as every day I am subjected to mind-blowingly crap customer service experiences. Only yesterday I called the Orange call centre and in the end lost the will to live after 20 minutes on hold – a great example of denial of service. What did I want to do? I wanted to edit the account name. No reason to force me to do this with a person – I should have been able to do this via the account portal but you can’t because it can’t, nor can I email them my request because this isn’t an option. Result – spectacular Orange failure to understand its customers and the service they really want.
Here we are in 2009 and ten-years since it first re-wrote the rulebook, Amazon is still a guiding light on how to deliver online customer service. Others still can’t see the light or can’t find the will to follow.

WordPress Tags: Customer Service,customer engagement,client satisfaction,benchmark,performance,applause,consumer,Orange


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our favourite office hero

19 Jan

Andy Moore gets more than his fair share of nominations for our internal Service Obsessed awards. He never sleeps and is always available on call for stuff other mortal engineers can’t fix. So we had to nominate him for the Computer Weekly IT superheroes competition. A great fun competition sponsored by our friends at Firebrand Training. In the end he didn’t win. If you can’t win then it’s not so bad to be beaten by a client – well done Toby!

click here to watch Andy’s video submission

Best Companies

8 Jan

Here is the photo that will go in this years Best Companies Guide.

Best Companies has developed a rigorous way to assess what it’s like to work for a company. It’s not rocket science!

Here is last years profile. 92% OF STAFF AGREED I believe I can make a valuable contribution to the success of this organisation. 92% OF STAFF AGREED My team is fun to work with. 90% OF STAFF AGREED I feel that my manager talks openly and honestly with me.

Anyone can do IT – IT Lab do it with Service Obsession™

6 Dec

We have set ourselves the target of becoming the best professional services company in any sector, anywhere in the UK. A grand target which requires a grand vision to drive it – particularly against the backdrop of an industry where great service is the profound exception. Not afraid to roll up our sleeves and get the job done, we have attacked this target with trademark Obsessiveness and plotted a course to delivering legendary excellence.

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