Good day, bad day!

Yesterday started well. The weather was fine as I made my way to Shorne Woods Country Park where I was going to be running two sessions on customer service for the Kent Country Parks teams from several different venues.

The first session went well and I managed to keep my annoying, tickly cough under control. The teams came up with some good improvement actions. The second session went equally well, again with no coughing fits. More good improvement ideas were presented and I left having received some excellent feedback. A job well done!

It all started to go wrong when I made the decision to travel home rather than back to the office. I joined the car park called the M25 and found myself in about 40 minutes of stop-start traffic caused by a single lorry that had broken down. How can one broken down lorry cause so much chaos? Beats me!

So a later than expected arrival home but still a couple of hours left in the day to crack on with some work.

A quick check of the day's post sitting on the mat. Bill (oh joy), another bill (oh joy), letter from Student Finance England (uh-oh), letter from Audi Finance (hmmm...).

Leave the bills for now and look at the Student Finance letter. "Your daughter has applied for student finance and she needs you to provide information to support the application. Please fill in the attached form...". That would be the information I already supplied online over 2 weeks ago, then? A quick read of the form confirms that yes, it's exactly the same information they are asking me for. Wait a minute, it's 9 May and the letter is dated 14 April! Is this unconscious incompetence or a three week delay in the postal system? Give them the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter. I'll call them to sort it out. Tickly cough still under control...

Ten minutes later and I have been through several different menus and been told by a recorded message that their officers are helping lots of people with enquiries at this time (why am I not surprised!). Imagine the thrill I experienced at hearing the recorded message suggest that I might like to deal with my enquiry by visiting their website...! Arrgghh! Does anyone else ever shout down the phone at recorded messages or is it just me? The system took its revenge as prolonged silence ensued and I had to accept after a couple of minutes that I had been cut off. Faint tickle in my throat...

I'm normally very calm and only realised I was having a bad time when my daughter arrived home and asked me if I'd been in the sun all day, to have such a red hue. I explained what had happened and she told me that yesterday she had received a letter telling her that all the necessary supporting paperwork has been received and that her student finance was finalised! No doubt about it, unconscious incompetence. And the really sad thing is, that having had dealings with this organisation for the last three years, I'm thinking that this is standard fayre - how low are my expectations!?

Back to the letter from Audi Finance. Having changed my car four weeks ago and agreed with my local Audi dealer that the last payment on the previous vehicle lease would be paid by them, I assumed that this might be confirmation. So with trembling hands I opened the letter: "Your bank has advised that the Direct Debit in our favour has been cancelled". "Please contact this office to confirm your intentions as to how you intend to liquidate the remaining balance". Liquidate the remaining balance? Plain English, anyone?

My daughter did call down from her bedroom at this stage to see if I was OK or had hurt myself in any way. I had a cup of tea to calm down and help clear the cough that had reappeared. I decided to call Audi Finance.

Surprisingly I got through to the right Department quite quickly and explained the letter. I explained what had been agreed with my local dealer and enjoyed a bit of revenge by advising them that they (not me!) would need to talk to the dealer to sort it out.

I was about to revel in my smugness when the polite female agent advised me that she could see a note on the file confirming the arrangement. "So why did you send me the letter?", I asked. "As soon as a Direct Debit is cancelled the system sends out that standard letter, despite what might be going on in the background", she said. My coughing started again.

As soon as a Direct Debit is cancelled the system sends out that standard letter, despite what might be going on in the background. So what we have here is a customer facing process that has been designed to benefit the organisation and not the customer. And which doesn't use plain English!

I made it clear that I was delighted that I had cancelled my Direct Debit in good time otherwise I'd have suffered financially too. "Oh, we'd have refunded you the money, Sir", came the reply. Is that good enough?

Nobody is perfect and this was just a bad end to the day for me. I don't have the energy to attempt to help Student Finance England improve its customer facing processes but I will pursue the issue with Audi Finance as I'm sure I can help them in some small way.

We don't do enough in this country to help businesses avoid annoying their customers. We need to point out to them when things aren't as they should be. Let's do more of it and help get service higher up the corporate agendas.

Portas highlights power of product knowledge!

Mary Portas Secret Shopper – Episode 4

Opinion : Another really good show -”the west facing is the new south facing!”, good grief! We have all experienced it. The estate agency estate game is seen as money for old rope and does have a poor reputation. At a recent large networking event I attended, an Estate Agent delegate stood up, introduced himself and then apologised for being what he was! That can't be a good thing.

The son Simon was so entrenched in his business that he couldn’t see the obvious things wrong with the industry. It took time, but well done to him for making the change.

Out of all of the shows I felt this was the most enjoyable with really good tips to make the industry improve and ideas that other real estate agents can simply use if they dare to be different.

Feedback

It seems a shame that Mary Portas did not look properly at the whole process rather than just the property viewing. For example, when the buyer moves in what happens? When a buyer moves to a new area how can the agent educate them?

We did a lot of mystery shopping in Australia within this sector and we measured numerous different processes within the real estate industry. Improvement was required over the whole experience and not just the property viewing.

My thoughts on Episode 4 of Secret Shopper are:

1. Product knowledge = confidence = enthusiasm = passion = energy! Customer service is an energy business! Look how much better they conducted the viewings when they really understood their product, the house they were selling!
   
2. Use plain English all of the time – customers lose trust when they don’t understand.
3. Mystery shop the opposition to identify where your service ranks with your competitors. If you have been running a business for a long time you must ensure you look at different ways to do business – going stale kills business.

Contact us if you feel you could use some help in identifying what your customers think about your business! www.shopperanonymous.co.uk or www.shopperanonymous.co.uk/contact/kent

B = f (I E)

"If you wonder what getting and keeping the right employees has to do with getting and keeping the right customers, the answer is everything."　 Fred Reichheld, The Loyalty Effect

If ever there was a great example of this, it was surely on last night's (19 January) Channel 4 episode of Mary Portas's Secret Shopper programme. The fast fashion outlet Pilot had probably taken on the right employees but wasn't setting the right environment to keep them that way! The demotivated, unenthused, uninterested staff that the programme portrayed showed that clearly. And 65% of the Pilot customers said they were unhappy about the level of service in Pilot. How many of those customers would Pilot keep, I wonder?

B = f (I E) - Behaviour is a Function of the Individual and the Environment. The Pilot management had set a product-led culture and a product-led environment. And the staff behaved accordingly. We are what we are and you can't necessarily or easily change the core characteristics of an individual but boy can you do a lot to change the environment. See what happened when Portas took the staff into a buzzy, exciting, fun, energy-laden business to serve customers. Their behaviour changed instantly!

Fred Reicheld got it right and Portas gave us a great example last night!

The Siren Evolves!

Starbucks is causing a bit of a stir as, in a major rebranding initiative, it's taking the words "Starbucks" and "Coffee" out of its logo! This is only the second time that Starbucks has rebranded in the last 40 years or so.

If you look around, you can see that quite a few progressive companies are going or have gone down the route of having an icon-only logo (e.g. Nike, Apple) or a logo that is still readily identifiable when you see the icon part of it without the words (e.g. Macdonalds, Audi).

It's quite a brave move and suggests a brand that is extremely confident of the fact that it is well-known.

There are a number of positives that come out of such a move. Firstly, the iconic logo will have no language or alphabetic barriers around the world. Secondly, it lends itself nicely to any plans that may be afoot to launch digital applications such as smartphone apps, where simplicity is king.

Mike P, Starbucks Senior Creative Manager says: "After hundreds of explorations, we found the answer in simplicity. Removing the words from the mark, bringing in the green, and taking the Siren out of her ring. For forty years she’s represented coffee, and now she is the star."

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz says: "Throughout the last four decades, the Siren has been there through it all. And now, we’ve given her a small but meaningful update to ensure that the Starbucks brand continues to embrace our heritage in ways that are true to our core values and that also ensure we remain relevant and poised for future growth."

"As we look forward to Starbucks next chapter, we see a world in which we are a vital part of over 16,000 neighborhoods around the world, in more than 50 countries, forming connections with millions of customers every day in our stores, in grocery aisles, at home and at work. Starbucks will continue to offer the highest-quality coffee, but we will offer other products as well – and while the integrity, quality and consistency of these products must remain true to who we are, our new brand identity will give us the freedom and flexibility to explore innovations and new channels of distribution that will keep us in step with our current customers and build strong connections with new customers."

Personally, I'm not sure I would immediately equate the new brand to Starbucks, would you?

Please ignore the customers!

There's an increasing trend in High Street retail, to open early to the public on a Sunday to allow customers a certain amount of "browsing time". This is often done to get around the Sunday Trading laws in which shops over 3,000 square feet (that's the majority) are only allowed to open their tills for six hours on a Sunday, a law which came into force in 1994.

This trend has come to light recently, as for the first time since 2004, the 2010 Boxing Day holiday - traditionally a big Sales day for retail - fell on a Sunday in 2010.

According to The Telegraph, a spokesman for Debenhams said they had drafted in extra staff, and were opening far more tills than normal, to cope with the expected queues of shoppers. "We're not breaking any laws, and we need to make sure we serve our customers."

Quite right too, but we have learned from a reliable source that in at least one branch of Debenhams, staff have been instructed to avoid all contact with the public during this browsing time.

I wonder how that feels to the customer who needs a bit of advice and help to make a buying decision? Is it really serving the customer? I don't think so!

Let's hope that Debenhams' mystery shopper company doesn't send its people in to their stores early on a Sunday morning!