Watch the Customer!
11/12/07 posted by Ian Morton at 4:02 PM
Remember the old movies when a guy taking a picture used to say ‘watch the birdie’ and everyone promptly stared at the stuffed bird held in the photographer’s hand?
Usually it was only for a very short time, then with a bang and a flash it was all over and hey presto you had a beautiful picture (well something in sepia anyway) to keep the customers happy
I sometimes wish delivering customer service could be so visual and dramatic, where you could wave a magic wand and it would be fixed instantaneously to the customers delight. How different it is in real life
Normally it is down to the detail of how you respond to, and manage, peoples expectations, being able to meet changing demands and thinking on your feet
A small event happened to me this week that emphasised the need to keep an eye on your customer at all times and remember that the customer is the primary reason we are here (they hold the money after all)
I made the mistake of driving to Gatwick Airport and trying to park in the short term car park. This is always very busy, irrespective of time of day, and has a row of automatic barriers where you take your ticket, the barrier machine waits for a period of time, obviously doing some detailed electronic analysis of you, your car, number plates, painting it’s electronic nails etc and then lets you in to the hallowed sanctuary of the car park
Well on Monday one of the barriers had broken and the attendant was trying to fix the machine. A lady in her mini was stuck at the barrier entrance as the bar would not lift, and the weight of traffic rapidly built up so she could not reverse. The traffic then got so bad it started to block the entrance road. Chaos and tooting horns, very embarrassed lady (not her fault) grumpy commuters going to miss the Gatwick express to London and general travellers lost at the start of their journey. (It’s amazing how bad tempered we become when something gets in the way of our routine commute)
But back to the attendant, who at that time represented NCP. Did he let the lady through? Did he try and manage the traffic? Did he call for assistance?
No. He did the very human thing of doing what he was most comfortable with, trying to fix the machine, then as the pressure got worse, carried on trying to fix the machine and ignored the increasing chaos around him. It was much safer with the machine than trying to calm a load of frustrated customers of NCP!
Simple message, but get it right it’s a powerful one, train and enable your staff to look after the customers first, not the machine or the process. You can (normally) fix them afterwards. Think of the positive impression that attendant could have created if he had taken control of the situation and kept the traffic flowing. Those people involved would have praised NCP, not muttered some of the comments I heard!
Usually it was only for a very short time, then with a bang and a flash it was all over and hey presto you had a beautiful picture (well something in sepia anyway) to keep the customers happy
I sometimes wish delivering customer service could be so visual and dramatic, where you could wave a magic wand and it would be fixed instantaneously to the customers delight. How different it is in real life
Normally it is down to the detail of how you respond to, and manage, peoples expectations, being able to meet changing demands and thinking on your feet
A small event happened to me this week that emphasised the need to keep an eye on your customer at all times and remember that the customer is the primary reason we are here (they hold the money after all)
I made the mistake of driving to Gatwick Airport and trying to park in the short term car park. This is always very busy, irrespective of time of day, and has a row of automatic barriers where you take your ticket, the barrier machine waits for a period of time, obviously doing some detailed electronic analysis of you, your car, number plates, painting it’s electronic nails etc and then lets you in to the hallowed sanctuary of the car park
Well on Monday one of the barriers had broken and the attendant was trying to fix the machine. A lady in her mini was stuck at the barrier entrance as the bar would not lift, and the weight of traffic rapidly built up so she could not reverse. The traffic then got so bad it started to block the entrance road. Chaos and tooting horns, very embarrassed lady (not her fault) grumpy commuters going to miss the Gatwick express to London and general travellers lost at the start of their journey. (It’s amazing how bad tempered we become when something gets in the way of our routine commute)
But back to the attendant, who at that time represented NCP. Did he let the lady through? Did he try and manage the traffic? Did he call for assistance?
No. He did the very human thing of doing what he was most comfortable with, trying to fix the machine, then as the pressure got worse, carried on trying to fix the machine and ignored the increasing chaos around him. It was much safer with the machine than trying to calm a load of frustrated customers of NCP!
Simple message, but get it right it’s a powerful one, train and enable your staff to look after the customers first, not the machine or the process. You can (normally) fix them afterwards. Think of the positive impression that attendant could have created if he had taken control of the situation and kept the traffic flowing. Those people involved would have praised NCP, not muttered some of the comments I heard!
Labels: customer experience, dumb things
posted by Ian Morton at
4:02 PM
1 Comments:
And the opposite of this car park experience is when you go to the hotel lobby to pay and pick up your exit token and the PIN terminal requests a referral on your card. After 30 seconds waiting in the phone queue for authorisation the receptionist sees the queue building up at her desk, hangs up and gives you a token without having to pay.
That was quick thinking but perhaps too quick. Everyone standing behind me was also waiting for car park tokens and saw that I got a free exit! I left her to deal with the grumpy customers behing me.
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