Customer Service Has Never Been So Important

The last few weeks have highlighted some massive discrepancies in customer service levels in my personal life that I can’t help but think we can learn from on a professional level.

The first instance concerns my purchase of a new house. There are three conveyancing solicitors involved in the chain: ours, our buyer’s and the seller’s. The latter is fantastic; on-the-ball, communicative and trustworthy. And then there are the other two.

Our solicitor has consistently failed to keep us updated, and doesn’t return emails and phone calls. And when she does it’s with a robotic, stick-to-the-facts, coldness that leaves us feeling very much like the names on a piece of paper that we obviously are. As a result we feel ill-informed, out of control, powerless and extremely stressed. 

Now I’m not asking for her friendship, but the lack of any sort of warmth or empathy for the stresses of the house buying process and the upheaval it causes all parties is astounding. There is more to customer service than ‘doing the job’, and friendly communication would have gone a long way to managing anxiety and expectations over the last few weeks.

Our seller’s solicitor cost a few hundred pounds more than ours. But I would have paid double that for the service he’s provided the person we’re buying from. There’s no excuse for poor communication.

Losing Business

The second instance concerns the replacement of a boiler in a property that my wife owns and rents to her brother. The boiler started playing up a few weeks ago so we called in a heating engineer. He cancelled the first appointment at short notice, but attended at the second time of asking and ‘fixed’ the problem. Until it broke down completely a week later.

It took another two weeks to get him back, during which time my brother-in-law had no heating. And then he cancelled again at short notice. Eventually we were able to use a WhatsApp video call to get a quote to replace the boiler, but had to chase several times for that to come, and the person my wife spoke to on each occasion was snotty and dismissive and behaved like she was doing us a huge favour.

Eventually we turned to British Gas, who sent an engineer out within two days, got back to us the following day with a quote, sent multiple text messages to keep us informed and then spent ages on the phone to my wife patiently running through everything. Could not have been more helpful. Guess which company we went with?

On Empathy

I’m a firm believer in ‘being nice’. The days when unfriendly service and poor communications were acceptable have long gone, and the stresses of the last year have made this even more the case. Only last week, and due to the ongoing hassle I’ve been having with the house, I had to delay a piece of work that was coming due. But rather than ignore the situation and wait for the client to chase me, I emailed them ahead of time, apologising and explaining the situation, to agree a new delivery date. 

We’re all under immense pressure at the current time. Working from home and lockdowns are taking their toll. Some business sectors are super busy while others are losing their livelihoods. Some of us have very ill relations and friends; some are experiencing grief.

So surely being thoughtful and friendly and apologetic and humble and empathetic should just be ‘the way things are’?

For many I suspect that is the case. Unless you’re a solicitor or a heating engineer.

Paul Sutton is an independent digital marketing consultant and the producer of the Digital Download podcast. More info at www.paulsutton.co