Swindon Coaching Team: Swindon Coaching Team on the Radio again
Among the topics we discussed was the differences between customer service in the UAE and UK. I believe a key difference is job security. In the UAE jobs and visas last very little time and it is difficult to change jobs. And its not in job descriptions to 'go the extra mile' and delegation is not encouraged. Customer service is 'following the rules' .
From personal experience it required (non forthcoming) authorisation to give me the additional £50 it had cost me to get a battery replaced, together with three visits to the hire company, the cost of my and their time far outweighed the amounts disputed. This happened time and time again.
When a hotel receptionist mischarged me for my room, her fear for her job was palpable, and I spent most of my time reassuring her that we all make mistakes and that she would be OK.
A good way to judge any organisation is how it rectifies mistakes. With increasing job insecurity in the UK, the same reactions are likely to happen here, unless management takes retains its positive approach to delegation and acknowledges that we all make mistakes. Not in keeping with the 6 sigma brigade I know - so "let he who is without sin, cast the first stone".
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Further to this posting I was asked to compare customer service in UAE with that of UK. I posted on the EIU Opinion Leaders' Panel and got this response: That's interesting as I see the lack of authority as a widespread problem in customer service, not just in the UAE. We did some research earlier this year on the future of customer service and one of our key findings was that customer service leaders are much more likely to empower their staff to make decisions when resolving customer issues, compared with average firms. And while weaker firms are investing more heavily in standardised service processes, leading firms are prioritising staff training and development. Here's the link to the full report - Service 2020 - hope you find it of interest: http://www.businessresearch.eiu.com/service-2020.html
here is an extract
Lessons from service leaders
If customer service is going to be increasingly important in the decade ahead, what are the leading practitioners already doing differently today? In our survey, about 16% of executives describe their firms as “excellent” at customer service, relative to their peers. Segmenting these firms against those that rate themselves as merely average, or below average, yields some insights into how some leading customer service practitioners are working:
• While the average firms of today compete primarily on quality, service leaders unsurprisingly already prioritise customer service as their competitive differentiator, far ahead of cost. In line with this, these firms are far more systematic about implementing proper systems for tracking customer feedback and complaints, as well as identifying potential service weaknesses. Nearly 50% more have these in place, ahead of weaker rivals.
• Three quarters of customer service leaders have empowered their staff to make decisions when resolving customer issues, compared with less than half among average firms. And while weaker firms are investing more heavily in standardised service processes, leading firms are prioritising staff training and development, and also working harder to define service standards and goals.
• While both strong and weak service firms see information-enabled consumers as a major driver for change in recent years, weaker firms think communications technology is the primary driver, while leaders see competition as the defining force.
• Service leaders are more focussed on social media already: they monitor it more closely, use it more often to connect with clients and generally collect more external data to feed into their tracking systems. Related to this, a far higher proportion of leaders say their firms are excellent, or above average, at using technology to understand their customers.
• Finally, while service leaders expect to use service to stand out from the crowd, it is largely only the weaker firms that expect typically to charge a premium for this service.
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