Guy Tweedale

Jacada

Guy Tweedale, Senior Vice President, European Operations, has more than 18 years of experience in the IT industry. He brings a wealth of knowledge in the enterprise software arena to Jacada, with a strong focus on business process automation and enhancement in key areas such as customer management, field-based activities and financial control.

Technology isn't a substitute for great service

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Posted on 2010-07-15

On the face of it, the title for this blog is a strange assertion from a senior executive of a company offering technology-based solutions to improve customer service.
But I was recently asked to comment about the future of customer service in 2020. This got me thinking. Much has been talked about the impact of social media on customer service, and, don't get me wrong, I really believe that social media (or the great great grandchild of what we currently call social media) is going to play a major role in the customer service of the future.

But, regardless of the technology that exists – or will exist – we can't lose sight of the most basic universal customer service truth: good service is good service, and bad service is bad service. And that basic tenet applies regardless of industry, company size or the way we reach out to the companies we do business with. And I think we can all take as read that the quality of customer service has a huge impact on...

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Utility companies shouldn't throw in the customer service towel. Not yet.

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Posted on 2010-05-17

Published in Utility Week, 14 May 2010

Yet again the big six UK utility companies have been found wanting in terms of their customer service. In the latest Which? customer survey of 8,000 members the number of customers saying they were satisfied with the service they received ranged from npower's paltry 27% to a not exactly stellar 50% given to Scottish & Southern Energy.

And yet we all know that customer satisfaction is a significant element in helping companies to retain their customers, which in turn is key to the majority of organisations' success.

That got me thinking... Improving customer retention within utilities has to be one of the hardest tasks in the world.

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Volcanic Ash Flight Crisis a Missed Opportunity in Customer Service

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Posted on 2010-04-23

A volcano in Iceland has devastated our world by spewing clouds of ash high into the air and interfering with passing planes. This has caused real chaos in Europe during the past week or so. Much discussion is in play about whether it was or was not safe to fly through this ash last week but really that is just the normal human reaction of proclamation by hindsight... and not the real issue.

People from all walks of life were caught out by this incident. On the morning of April 15th I was personally due to fly to Belgium for a meeting early the next day. On the tube on the way in I heard the news and very quickly, and it seems smartly, rang the travel agency and told them to book me on Eurostar – I got the last seat out and back! The news for the last few days has been full of pictures of people suffering the pain and anguish of being separated from loved ones, their homes and their jobs. Many were complaining that they just did not know what to do. For...

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Even the Daily Mail Rants About Poor Service in UK

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Posted on 2010-03-26

It was only a matter of time before the Daily Mail focused in again on one of the things that seems have an impact on all of our lives these days, regardless of our age, gender or social status. This time it's not just the Daily Mail's rantings... they have found a topic around which most of us can agree, as many discussions around the dining room table or in a pub will highlight, contact centres have become the focus of our passive aggressive anger – "Is anyone listening? The real state of customer service."

The Daily Mail piece focused on telecommunications providers. But research we've recently undertaken shows that their findings are relevant across most industries. And, interestingly, poor customer service seems to be endemic across all the territories in which we do business (we undertook the research in...

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How Does Generation Y View Customer Service?

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Posted on 2010-03-09

On 19 May 1986 TIME magazine published an article entitled "Growing pains at 40". The article announced the coming of age of the Baby Boomers, who had reached 'middle age'. In the article Al Gore said "We wanted to change it all, to do it our way."

Today we baby boomers complain about how Generation Y are shouting out loud about their independence and the fact that they will "change it all and like to do things their own way". The fact of the matter is that way back when the baby boomers started we were challenging the status quo and finding new ways to communicate and influence the world – think of fax machines, mobile telephony, the birth of the internet and 24 hour news channels... were we any different than today's generation?

Generation Y are the true mobile internet generation; they live and breathe social media and instant communications. Research shows (from Morgan Stanley's mobile Internet report 2010) that more than...

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