If there is something to learn about service its good to focus on one of the oldest industries in the world: Retail. Retail is simple, you purchase goods, display them in the best possible way and sell the goods at prices customers want to pay, at the end of the day you count your money take off your costs and whats left is your profit. Now I know its not that simple but many retailers lost this simple principle.
Every christmass time my father sells christmass trees for the local music association http://www.mvengelhard.nl/. Here I experienced the simple retail principle most purely. And although my father is 79 years now he is showing me something very essential in retail sales and service: a huge engagement in the job, enjoy it and give a lot of personal attention and service to the customer. It all is very well apreciated in the local community and every year they sell more trees. All the profit goes straight into new instruments and equipment.
In my village there is a franchise outlet of Hollands largest Supermarket Chain, Albert Heijn http://www.ah.nl/. In the past years they have been awarded 3 times as best Albert Heijn franchiser in Holland. I started to observe and talk occasionally with the manager and this learned me a great deal. Their succes is about simple things that gives the shopper a quality feeling. Its not about technology, its not about products they sell, its about service, personal attention and attention to details. When the customer asks where to find something the shop staff will walk te customer where he or she can find this. When a product is out of stock it will be replenished (actually it will be filled up way before out of stock). When something is dirty its cleaned, when there are long lines check-outs are opened up, etc. So here too the engagement, personal attention and good service make the difference.
Although the basic principle is so simple there are more examples of bad service then there are good examples. I guess there are plenty you can think of? The absolute winner in bad customer service to me was years ago when I visited East Germany and got shouted at when a restaurant employee felt stress when we western schoolboys wanted to eat all at the same time :-) Now the work moral in East Germany was low and there was no alternative restaurant but closer to home restaurant experiences aren't that good as well, especially if you go out with kids and have to wait for ages........
Crucial to all offline service experiences is good contact with the customer, good management of the staff, clear procedures and employees have pleasure and engagement in the job. At my local Albert Heijn you see the manager refill out of stock, clean floors and interact with customers.
I clearly state offline service. Offline service is the work of people and when done well an absolute treat. Online service is perceived as very good but there is no personal contact involved. That is interesting because it goes straight into all rules of good (offline) service. Online technology is evolved the past 8 years and enabling a very good customer experience that exeeds most of the offline experiences. When a customer enters the Albert Heijn the best customer gets the same treatment as the worst customer, really. Ponder at that for a moment because it is o so true. It started with cookies and now we leave our profile everywhere and is our clicking and buying behaviour registered. This sounds scary but is happening: right here, right now. The same rule applies on the internet too, if your customer is not treated well he or she will never return. Worse, online the competition is just "one click away" and is shopping so transparent that service is making the difference. Also when your profile or clicking behaviour is misused or you receive SPAM mail you will never return.
I had the opportunity to talk with a leading dutch marketing platform and learn they combine all the data with normal human business logic and engage the online customer over and over again for leading dutch firms. 400 million personalised mails in 2007 engage brand and customer online. For instance you buy a camera online, get a survey in a week after the delivery about- the product and the service and in two weeks time get offers for accesoires. Are you offended? No you are happy that exactly at the right moment you get the right offers and periodically get personalised offers that really are about the products you like. And yes you buy. Statistics still show growth of online sales and still we go out to get the poor service offline.
In 2000 all offline retailers, bricks in those days, where predicted to be on a dead end street. Its 2008 now and bricks and clicks live togheter. Now the theme is how to follow the customer from online to offline and vice versa. With the virtues of online marketing there is only one problem, what happens to the customer we engage with when he turns out the computer. Right, he or she is as anonymous as everybody.
Where the online world meet the offline world is very interesting. Selfservice is the magic word and online technology meets the physical world. But just putting a machine on a place where you used to be helped by people is not working by itself. I have observed for instance the interaction between traveler check-in desk personel on an Airport. After standing in a waiting line the desk clerck takes over the ticket and pasport and enters the data, asks about where to sit, puts the label on the suitcase and tells people where to board and at what time. No engagement, no service just exchanging the essential information. With cash terminals being the first selfservice process in the 80-s the aviation industry started with selfservice in the late 90's. The current selfservice kiosks on airports still are the translation of the check in desk process into a user machine process and giove a very poor customer experience. The result is that floor walkers who actually should give positive service take over the process and check you in, selfservice? No just a different kind of check in desk. In the evolution of self service there still is a long way to go. The development of good selfservice needs a complete different approach and the evolution is jsut started. In the meantime we will see more and more sub-optimal sollutions being rolled out beacuse the business case is as solid as a rock. Most selfservice kiosks are cost effective between 12 to 18 months but give 24 hours 7 days a week maximum capacity and changes the role of the desk clerck into a service host ............... as long as the host does her job well and go back to the basic rules of offline service: a huge engagement in the job, enjoy it and give a lot of personal attention and service to the customer.
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