The Hob that (nearly) stole Christmas

Leading up to Christmas this year I was forced to spend way too much of my precious time trying to teach a Global brand how to handle customer service, and especially aftercare. The issue I was dealing with was simply getting a repair done to an induction hob in my home. The saga started on the 26th November and didn’t finish until Christmas Eve, and to be quite honest it would not have been resolved now had I not used LinkedIn to find the Managing Director of the company and get him involved. I’m not going to name the brand, but it’s a premier one, with a great reputation, superb marketing, and an inability to fix one of their products first time. It took six booked service calls, of which the repair technician only arrived for three of them.

It made me think about what is important to customers again. What is important to a business, and it has led me once again to give some essential advice to anybody building a start-up, let alone an established brand. That is that the customer is ALL, fail them and you will fail. All that effort, all that investment, all those people that work for you. You will have failed them and yourself.

When I worked for Mars, very early in my career with them I meet John Mars, one of the owners. His first question to me was “who is your boss”. I told him who my line manager was, he told me it was the customer. I never forgot that lesson.

Now, we all know that customer service is an essential part of any business. It is the backbone of every successful company and any failings in customer service will have a major impact on a business’s reputation and bottom line. In this article, I will cover some of the common causes of customer service failings and discuss how businesses can prevent them. The wise entrepreneur will truly build customer service into every aspect of their business, and by this, I mean spend money on it. It is not a nice to have, it is an essential.

What causes customer service failings?

There are a variety of reasons why a business’s customer service may fail. Some of the most common causes include a lack of training and resources, failure to meet customer expectations, overpromising in business, and failing to handle a customer complaint. I’m going to take a closer look at each of these in this article to understand why they can lead to customer service failings.

Failure to meet customer expectations

The most common cause of customer service failings is failing to meet customer expectations. Customers expect businesses to provide a certain level of service, and if businesses fails to do so, they will suffer from a major loss of customers, because unhappy customers tell a lot more people about your business than happy ones do. This is especially true in the digital age, where customers have come to expect a certain level of convenience and personalized service. To avoid this, you must ensure you are meeting customer expectations by providing them with a high level of service. The digital age is also one of the reasons why customer service fails. I have lost count of the number of business’s that blame their customer service software, and in this I include their supply chain management software.

Too many times I have seen customer service software put into a business to improve service levels only for it also to fail. This is because the software is not a panacea, it is an enabler. Very often too much responsibility is passed to the tool itself and humans are not empowered to act. The business becomes system bounded and if the “computer says no”, people blame it, rather than solve a clear problem that would often take a human very little thought. Like any system implementation it is all about business transformation, it’s not a magic wand. Harry Potter is fiction you know! 

So, this leads me to the next point I want to make, and software companies are often guilty of this one.

Overpromising in business

Many businesses are guilty of making promises they can’t keep in the hopes of securing more customers. This can lead to customers feeling let down and frustrated, which can cause them to take their business elsewhere. To avoid this, businesses must ensure they are making realistic promises that they can keep and when it looks like they are failing to do so they need fast escalation procedures, or even better empowered customer contact points where people can examine, analyse, and resolve customer issues.

How many times do you have to go through a telephone call pressing buttons to get to the right person in the organisation only to find they are not the right person after all? You hate it don’t you? So why impose it on your clients? Use technology to route calls effectively. You should aim and pride yourself on the fact that issues are resolved by the first person your customer speaks to, or at worst by the second person. AND you must measure your success at this and analyse your failures with a view to learning from them. That, if it is done honestly, is a true key performance indicator (kpi) that you should use.

In the case of my hob complaint the business massively overpromised. It all started well. On the 27th November I used their website to arrange a technician to come and make the repair on the 29th November (yes, I could pick the date convenient to me). On confirming the booking a web page and email told me I would be contacted the day before the visit by the company’s partner (who they had given the repair to) to confirm exact timings. I heard nothing and then rang the customer service team at the manufacturer. Instead of chasing the partner they immediately sold me on the idea of a fixed price repair by one of their own technicians if I was willing to wait until the following week. BUT, the repair came with a one year guarantee and a guarantee that the repair would be completed. Now, apart from taking business away from their partner, which I thought was strange, they were overpromising in a huge manner to me, but I took up their offer.

How not to handle a customer complaint

Customer complaints are an inevitable part of doing business, but how you handle them can make a huge difference. I spoke a little about this just now but I want to highlight another common cause of customer service failings. 

I will use the example of my hob repair once again. The three times repair technicians failed to turn up was simply because the parts they needed were not in stock or were in stock but had not been delivered to the technician. Their own organisation’s logistics and information systems had let them down, and in turn they were letting me down. By speaking to people inside the business I discovered that they had issues with their own stock systems, they did not handle parts that had been returned from the field well, and they had no real approach other than “work arounds” to determine if an item that was needed was in stock. They were even operating two internal systems that showed different inventory numbers, and the day when one of their technicians waited on the telephone in my house for 25 minutes to get through to somebody who could rebook a service call because they were unable to fix the issue, despite having the part in their hands (which turned out to be faulty itself) was laughable.

Then despite this (fifth) service call being confirmed on that telephone call by the technician on the morning it was due to happen I had to ring the customer service line to find out that the service call would not actually take place because the parts required were not in stock. At that point I suggested they take out the existing hob and sell me, yes sell to me and install, a new hob. I was then told that this could not be done because the issue was not resolved and only if a technician declared that my existing hob was beyond repair would they be able to sell me a new one and install it. This was simply because I had paid £299 already for a fixed price repair and they could not authorise taking that sum off the price of a new hob. When I asked how long this would take, I was told 3 to 4 business days. They not only had failed to repair the hob (which by the way is just over two years old) for over a month by this time, they were not even letting me buy a new one from them! 

You could not make this situation up, could you?

Why does a brand image not match customer service?

Another common cause of customer service failings is when a business’s brand image does not match its customer service. Many businesses make lavish promises in their marketing materials, only to fail to deliver on them when it comes to their actual customer service. This leads to customers feeling let down and frustrated, it causes them to take their business elsewhere. To avoid this, businesses must ensure their brand image is in line with their customer service and delivery.

So, ask yourself, if your marketers are making lavish promises are those promises signed off by the people who must deliver against them? You really should check that you can deliver what you promise. You spend a lot of money building a premium brand image only for your people or your systems to let that image down, or worse, as I have said before, your systems and procedures do not allow your people to deliver against your brand image and promise.

Why is customer service so poor nowadays?

My feeling is the customer service industry has been declining in recent years, and it’s easy to see why. Many businesses are cutting corners to save money, and this can lead to a decrease in customer service quality. Additionally, as I have said many businesses are relying on automated systems to handle customer service inquiries, which contrary to their claims actually lead to a lack of personalisation. They also generally foster, from what I have experienced, a feeling of detachment from the customers. 

Customers are now sophisticated, we know when the customer service person is reading through a script, we know when they are not empowered to act in our best interests, and let me say, before you state otherwise, it is not right to say that if you allowed your customer service staff to give away everything customers asked for you would go out of business. Train your people properly, explain to them how the business works, explain to them how margins are made and retained and make them feel ownership of the company’s money, but also talk to them about the lifetime value of clients. In my case I was about to spend another 8,000 GBP on upgrading all the appliances in the kitchen, now I won’t be spending that money with the company who failed to deliver against their promise to me.

So, to avoid this situation in your company, ensure you invest in proper customer service training and resources. This does not mean telling people to simply smile or stand up when they are on the telephone. It means doing all the things I listed above, and then much more. Especially important is hiring the right people and paying them properly for the essential job they are doing.

Do people care about the customer anymore?

Sadly, I think the customer service industry has seen a shift in recent years, with many businesses focusing more on profits than on providing a good customer experience. This can lead to failings and customers feeling neglected and unimportant, which will cause them to take their business elsewhere. To avoid this, you must ensure that you are prioritising customer service and treating customers with respect. The one thing I will say is that everybody I dealt with in the manufacturer of the hob (that has now become a big part of this story) was very pleasant, and often very apologetic, but they were not empowered to truly fix my problem. Their training, their information, the processes they were using were sub-standard. I later found out that the company in question has recently employed a manager who is expert in customer service transformation, so they clearly recognise the problems they have. I discovered this because at one point I was talking to him. I offered my help to them in terms of their improvement program.

Why do so many companies fail their clients?

The main reason why many companies fail their clients is due to a lack of communication and investment in the area. Many businesses fail to properly communicate with their customers, which leads to confusion and a feeling of detachment. Additionally, many businesses fail to properly assess a customer’s needs, which can lead to a failure to meet their expectations. To avoid this, you must employ the right people and train them properly.

Conclusion

It’s clear that customer service failings have a major impact on any business. That’s why it’s so important for you to understand the causes of customer service failings and how to prevent them. By investing in proper customer service training and resources, communicating with customers, and assessing their needs, you can ensure you are providing the best possible customer service. 

I targeted this piece towards start-ups in the first instance because it is likely if you are just starting up that you are in fact the customer service team of your business, and nobody is going to care about your customers more than you. You will give them a “white glove” treatment and they will come to love you. If you don’t your business will fail. 

As you grow and scale your business you must employ people who will take over that customer service function from you. The person you pick as customer service employee ‘number one’ is such a critical appointment. You are seeking a zealot who hurts any time they let a customer down, in their turn as you grow, they will then select people like themselves. When the time comes to buy a customer service system for your business join the zealot in evaluating it and give it the time and attention it requires. Ignore the software marketing materials and speak to their clients, speak to analysts who independently evaluate the software and most important of all don’t compromise. It is better to employ more people in my opinion than buy a software package which is “nearly right” or “simply OK”.  What is going to set you apart from your competition is customer loyalty, you want your customers to be advocates and zealots. Grow your business with customer service at its heart and never lose that and you will be well on your way to success.

And finally, the hob did get repaired, in less than one day after I spoke with the managing director. A technician arrived with the elusive part on Christmas Eve at 09:00am and the repair was finished by 09:20am. By this time, I had already cancelled our plans for a family Christmas, and it meant that my wife and I actually did relax, not having to run around after relatives and make sure they were happy. We will go on to buy new appliances, but not from the manufacturer who in effect stole close on four days of my life. I will pay less for them, they will probably go wrong more frequently but I will sadly become part of the disposable, or at least recycling economy. Next time one goes wrong I will simply buy a new one because I no longer trust the aftercare of the sector. That’s a sad state of affairs really.