Carolyn Hall

The swing towards Voice of the Customer programs and Customer Experience Management seems to have made the subject of simple complaints handling seem rather old hat. Certainly, it seems to receive less coverage in the various industry media publications. Frankly, why would it? It’s not new and it’s not sexy and while CEM promises the world in terms of customer retention and ROI, complaints handling is often a call center process designed to make the customer go away again, as quickly and quietly as possible.

Of course, that’s not true in all industries and certainly not in all companies. The most compelling stories of customer loyalty that any of us hears, tend to be around a bad experience that was brilliantly handled at the complaints handling stage. In fact most of us have our own stories about...

I’ve recently attended a pre-natal course to teach me about looking after babies. It seemed wise because I know nothing about children, babies in particular, and I’m having one soon. I thought I should at least understand which way up to hold a baby and what to do with it when it makes too much noise.

The course was spread out over about a month, and after the last session I received a survey to find out what I’d thought of the course, how it could be improved, if it met my expectations, etc. While many people who take the course are unlikely to take it again, word of mouth is probably the main way that this organization sells its courses, and subsequently tells them about its online store and other services.

Of course I completed the survey. I like surveys and the personal nature of the service I was being asked to review meant I was pretty invested.

The survey was split into 2 parts; the first focused on what I’d expected from...

Until a few years ago, survey fatigue was a term used almost exclusively by the Market Research industry. While self-explanatory as a phrase, it wasn’t something that troubled the minds of many executives or managers at the majority of most enterprises. After all, how fatigued could a customer be after a single annual survey?

But things have moved on, and as more and more businesses embrace the Voice of the Customer and start building mission statements about “putting customers at the heart of everything we do”, customer surveys are becoming more and more popular – and in many cases, customers are getting correspondingly less and less inclined to reply.

The thing that really made this hit home for me was a comment made at an event I attended last month. It was an employee engagement seminar in which a number of HR...

The UK doesn’t have the best reputation when it comes to customer service. While in reality it’s often nothing like as bad as some people think, it’s also a long way from the smiley “have a nice day” you’ll get in the US or the enthusiasm and professionalism from parts of Europe. It seems that when it comes to customer service, particularly in the hospitality industry, we Brits can be a little bit rubbish.

In an attempt to change this, and to make some good TV out of it, chef Michel Roux Jr. has recently created a television series in which he took 8 young people, none of whom had considered a career in service, and trained them up over 8 weeks to teach them about how important service is to a good dining experience service.

It’s been a fascinating program, particularly amidst the dozens of cooking programs that are on these...