IS THERE
A PATTERN HERE
I'd
like to share with you some observations I’ve made recently.
Firstly, try as I might I cannot get enough material for a regular feature
in this newsletter citing examples of outstanding customer service. It just
doesn’t seem to happen very often. Clearly there are people in New Zealand
who occasionally deliver outstanding customer service but no one person or
company does so consistently. Not that I’ve heard anyway. If you know of one,
please let me know. They’re as scarce as hen’s teeth.
Secondly, it is, on the other hand, very easy to find examples of poor customer
service. One time last year, I set out to record all the experiences I had
as a customer during a given week. The idea was to classify them according
to whether they were positive, neutral or negative service experiences. I started
one Sunday morning and by Wednesday I gave up. Most of the experiences were
negative, a few were neutral and only one was positive. Over the years, I’ve
found that collecting bad experiences is like shooting fish in a barrel. It
is so easy to do. Every day people tell me about horrendous customer service
experiences they’ve had. It seems we have no problem getting it wrong consistently.
The third observation is that a number of speaker’s bureaus have told me that
they seldom get companies requesting for speakers to talk about customer service
or customer value. Now that’s puzzling - especially in light of the previous
observations. It’s really hard to find outstanding examples of customer service,
very easy to find poor examples, and few companies want people to talk to them
about customer care? Do New Zealand companies believe they are doing it well?
Surely not. Managers and business owners are customers too. They must encounter
poor customer service every day as they do business in the marketplace. And,
when they do, surely they realise that quite often their company is doing the
same things to its customers.
The final observation comes from the ANZ Bank study into the performance of
New Zealand companies. According to the report I read, 500 of the country’s
biggest public and private companies lost $6.5 billion of shareholder wealth
in 1998 and last year the top 40 companies shed a further $1.2 billion of wealth.
Could there be a connection between the first three observations and this fourth
one? ASB Bank typically wins awards and attains top ratings for its customer
service, and at the same time typically announces excellent profit results.
There is bound to be a connection between these two so why not one between
customer service performance and share-market value? After all, share price
is to a large extent dependent on financial performance which, as we have seen
from the ASB Bank example, is related to the ability to deliver consistently
good customer service.
If you believe your company is consistently delivering excellent customer service,
ring your psychologist today. These delusions can be treated! And, they might
cost you a lot of money, but not if they persist.
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