I recently took a break and visited my eldest son in Canada. He is half way through a working visa and we thought a trip to British Columbia – Whistler, Vancouver and Victoria (Vancouver Island), with a quick stop over in Seattle (USA), was quite in order.
Without boring you with details and inviting you over for slide night, it was a great trip.
Even though we were on a holiday, relaxing and discovering new places, it was a case of ‘you can take the man out of the business, but you can’t take the business out of the man’.
The ‘Customer Service Experience’ was something I was acutely aware of in every place we stayed and visited. Hotels, restaurants, cafes, markets, bars, places of interest, transport hubs, shops…everywhere I was considered a ‘customer’.
According to Turban et al. (2002), “Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation.” – Wikipedia. Across the board, the North American ‘experience’ reached my expectations and at times exceeded it. They are the masters of customer service. Almost all the service people we dealt with were interested, courteous and appeared to be happy to be in their job. I probably spent more money while we were away because these people made me feel comfortable wherever I was, and they made me feel welcome.
“There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.” Roger Staubach
Tips? You bet. And I will stick my neck out and say that the lower wage/tips system makes perfect sense and engenders enthusiasm as well as outstanding service experiences.
Twenty years ago a friend of mine went to North Carolina in the US for a working holiday and found herself waiting tables in a popular seafood restaurant over there. When she told me that she was earning ‘five bucks an hour’, I nearly fainted. But then she gave me the whole story, and most nights she would finish with her five dollars an hour plus $200 in tips. Some nights, $350-$400 wasn’t out of the question.
How did she earn it? She knew the product (food), she was happy, she made her customers happy and ensured the night was a great experience for all.
This is what I found when I went to North America. Good to great customer service experiences everywhere.
All holidays must end, so home we came. Back to the best country in the world, with some of the most mediocre customer service in the world.
Have I opened a can of worms? Maybe, but our customer service skills in general don’t compare with our friends on the other side of the Pacific.
We’ve all experienced it, poor customer service, but there does not appear to be any concerted push to improve it. Four out of five business don’t make it to see their second birthday and I’ll bet London to a brick that 50{5be8b5650852dcf96a34828ba5a88d9285f6c7439f02c8133f6b05e7d943eaff} or more of those failures are because these business had little or no concept of what customer service is or what it even looked like.
“Make a customer, not a sale.” Katherine Barchetti
So how surprised do you think I was when I was perusing some Real Estate information online the other day when I saw this headline, “Franchise boss sounds alarm about terrible service”?
What I basically knew about the industry I worked in was being made public by a Manager from well a known nation-wide Real Estate Franchise. You can read the article and her blog here.
Was I surprised by what the manager had revealed? No.
Are real Estate Agents delivering value for money to sellers in relation to the commission they are paid? I’ll let you answer that one.
Is the alternative to sell your own home with support from genuine experts, without commission, a viable alternative? You bet it is.
“In the world of Internet Customer Service, it’s important to remember your competitor is only one mouse click away.” Doug Warner
It’s really time for many service industries to lift their game or customers will find alternatives that are willing to disrupt the ‘old guard’ and welcome those customers with a smile, convenience and real service.
Photo credit: Rotary First 100
