The New Glass Ceiling: Are We Guilty of Holding Introverts Back?

There is a remarkable video of a talk that has recently been posted on the web by TED.com.   It’s about how introverts work and it is remarkable not just because this simple, 20 minute talk has notched up an incredible 1,270,000 views, despite only being posted a couple of weeks ago, but also because it is confidently delivered, against all her inclinations, by an avowed introvert.

As Susan Cain explains in her talk, public speaking is not a natural territory for introverts.  Very rarely will you see a conference stage or a boardroom paced by an introvert as they espouse their views on the matter in hand.  The people you see doing this are much more likely to be extroverts, who are significantly more comfortable than introverts with sharing the contents of their minds and hearts and far more inclined to engage in debate and discussion with others who agree or disagree.

Introverts, and that’s at least a considerable minority of the population (although estimations vary, with some arguing that it could include anything up to 50% of the population), just don’t tend to put themselves in these types of situations.  Reluctant to offer snap responses and preferring reflection and individual decision making to any common workplace practice such as arguing a case, negotiating an outcome or riding the wave of a discussion, introverts’ favourite spaces are far from the battlefields of meetings, public speaking or vigorous debate.

More importantly, they just don’t do their best thinking there. They struggle and usually fail to achieve their true potential in these environments, in stark opposition to extraverts who rely on external inputs and communication to stimulate their creativity, develop their ideas and help form their opinions.

So what then is introverted Susan Cain doing on stage commanding both a live and a huge global online audience?  An online audience that it is fair to say is one of the largest and quickest growing of all the TED.com talks: Susan has obviously hit on something big.

Well, she has written a book on introverts and, to be sure, there is no harm in a little self-promotion when you have something to sell.  However, listening to her talk, her genuine passion for chivvying the world into allowing introverts to do their thing, in their own way and into acknowledging the diversity of ways in which people contribute their talents is evident.  And she admits that, sometimes, introverts have to get out of their comfort zone and take up some of the space that extroverts inhabit in order that people can hear their ideas and so they can make their own contribution to the greater good.

How might Susan’s plea be relevant to customer service?  Isn’t everyone looking for that outgoing, confident, articulate and social being for their front line customer service role?  And in a service or sales environment don’t customers always prefer to be engaged by people who are chatty, interactive and convivial?

How would stereotypical introverts fare if you put them in an environment where they were required to interact all day with other people anyway?  Surely they would quickly discover that the job wasn’t for them and hightail it off to the safety of their libraries, computers or their bird-watching as soon as they could.  Wouldn’t they?

Well, probably not, at least not all of them.   There might be an archetypal introvert where this would be true, but there are all sorts of introverts, just as there are all sorts of extroverts.  They are not all painfully shy, tongue-tied wall-flowers who prefer solitude to company.   In fact, one of the amazing qualities of introverts is they often have incredible insight into human behaviour and emotion, since they spend much more time observing and listening to others.  And if people are of interest to them they are likely to have more inclination to analyse, interpret and reflect on how and why other people behave as they do.

Some introverts therefore are likely to be highly skilled interpreters of others’ communication, acutely sensitive to the emotions behind the words spoken and to have collected in their minds a catalogue of ways in which relationships work.

Their inclination to think before speaking often makes them great listeners – and certainly to appear to others as better listeners than many extroverts who often test out their understanding by speaking it out loud.  An introvert is more likely to reflect on it and continue listening.  People talking to introverts often feel  they have been able to say exactly what they wanted and that they have been heard in a way that they simply aren’t with someone who is contributing more to the back and forth, hurly burly of the conversation.

In short, some introverts are exactly the kind of people who would be able to build excellent relationships with customers.  True, the kind of service required in outgoing sales call centres may not be the kind they would enjoy or excel at.   But in those call centres where people are ringing in with concerns or complaints, or in face to face service environments where people are anxious or unwell or vulnerable (eg, health  or insurance providers), behaviourally minded introverts  could be ideally suited to much of the role requirements.

But how often do you see a job adverts asking for people-orientated introverts for a customer service role?  Or any role for that matter?  Probably never.  Any google search for customer service job advertisements reveals only terms such as “confident”, “outgoing” and “lively personality”.

Introverts inevitably miss out on these roles.  They probably rule themselves out when they see the descriptions of personality required and even if they apply, the fixation of customer service recruiters on extravert characteristics will inevitably mean that unless an introvert is very good at playing an extraverted role, they will fall at the first hurdle.

Susan Cain is right when she says that the world of work is missing a trick when they ignore the differences between extroverts and introverts and when education and workplaces are set up to bring out the best in extroverts, using open plan offices, team working and brainstorming groups for example.  Inevitably, if there is only one way that things are done, then the talents of introverts will be passed by, because what they need in order to do their best is different.

More than that, introverts are failing to get into many customer service workplaces at all because of organisations’ blinkered focus on the strengths of extroverts and a failure to give more careful consideration to the complexities of personality and what the role really requires.  (A quick check with some customers would be a good place to start:  being listened to would probably come somewhere near the top of customers’ “most-wanted” list.)

To make even more certain that introverts will be vastly under-represented in customer service jobs, selection processes are usually heavily biased in favour of extroverts, with candidates being given only a fraction of time at interview to demonstrate their communication skills and engaging personality.  Introverts may need a little more time or a better structured assessment to demonstrate their specific capabilities and unique talents which nevertheless may well be exactly what a particular customer service employee base is missing.

So I would extend Susan Cain’s appeal to the world to think about whether we are too often missing out on the unique talents of introverts because of the way that work is designed.  I would also like to see customer service employers assessing their roles with a more open mind as to the specific contributions that introverts are ideally placed to offer to customers and organisations.  A greater appreciation of the diversity of characteristics that contribute to meeting customers’ needs could be the catalyst for elevating bright and cheery customer service to truly connected customer relationships.

Links

http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts.html

Say it with a Smile! If It Lasts More Than 4 Seconds You’re Faking It

It’s just about the first rule of service: smile!

It is intended to indicate welcome, warmth and willingness to help.  And a million service managers will remind new service recruits to smile because it makes a difference to the customer, even on the phone.

But do they know what they are really asking?  How much lies behind a smile that psychologists can help us to understand, and if we knew about it would we still ask people to smile?

Here is a whiz through just some of the research that psychologists have done on smiling fromDarwin’s early science in his 1872 book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals right through to research reported at the 2012 British Psychological Society DoP Conference.

Did you know that:

• A genuine smile is known as a “Duchenne smile” in honour of the early French anatomist Guillame Duchenne who first documented the particular muscular contractions that define a genuine smile of pleasure.

• A genuine smile typically lasts less than 4 seconds

• In the 1970s two psychologists, Ekman and Friesen, developed a system known as FACS to identify genuine smiles from fake smiles and identified 17 different sorts of non-Duchenne smiles that humans engage in – but still only one genuine Duchenne smile.

 

• Displaying a genuine smile as a young adult in a formal photograph predicts likelihood of dying up to 55 years later. Abel and Kruger looked at longevity differences between baseball players smiling Duchenne smiles in a 1952 yearbook and those smiling non-Duchenne smiles.  The genuine smilers were half as likely to die in any given year.

 

• Smiling does you good.  When put in an upsetting situation, those who smile more genuine smiles display less distress and afterwards recover baseline cardiovascular levels more quickly.

 

• The mere act of contracting the muscles in a way that mimics a smile actually increases pleasure and enjoyment.  This is known as facial feedback and suggests that smiling can create positive emotion just as positive emotion can create a smile.

 

• Some people find it easy to generate genuine smiles in service situations through experiencing real positive emotions in customer interactions.  Others have to work much harder at this emotional labour and feel fraudulent and cynical as they don’t experience the underlying positive emotion to accompany the surface expression required. (see previous post on emotional labour)

 

• Genuine smiles convey cooperation and altruism and people seem to use an evaluation of whether a smile is genuine as a way of identifying who they most want to cooperate with.

 

• A genuine smile is catching – most of us just can’t help beaming back at a real smile.

 

There is much more psychological research to be found if you are interested: theAPSObserver article by Jaffe in the reference section will give you pointers for more exploration of the subject, along with the source references listed.

However, what about the nuggets of information above – what do these mean for people working in the industry in which there is arguably the greatest expectation of a smile from an employee? 

Well, probably that service with a smile is the way to go and that it is a good idea to promote smiling in the service workplace.  It sends the right messages to both colleagues and customers, it makes us feel better and it encourages others to smile too.

But also that for some people a smile doesn’t come as naturally and jobs that require this kind of emotional labour are not for everyone.  So we should select people with an eye to the genuineness of their smile and how easy they find it to connect to genuine positive emotion that means their smiles at customer will be self-reinforcing, positive experiences for both employee and customer alike.

What is more, perhaps a management reminder to smile is not the best way to increase the smile quotient of your service environment.  Instead think more creatively about how to produce genuine Duchenne smiles in your service teams.  Inject some more fun into their work environment, share a joke, talk about the positive aspects of customer interactions and, most importantly of all, smile at them.  But not for too long…..

 References:

 Abel E. and Kruger M. (2010) “Smile Intensity in Photographs Predicts Longevity”, Psychological Science, 21, 542–544.

Darwin, C. (1872) The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, London: J. Murray.
Duchenne G.B., (1990) The mechanism of human facial expression, trans. R.A. Cuthbertson, Cambridge University Press.

P. Ekman and W. Friesen. Facial Action Coding System: A Technique for the Measurement of Facial Movement. Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, 1978.

Fredrickson, B.L., and Levenson, R.W. (1998) “Positive emotions speed recovery from the cardiovascular sequelae of negative emotions”, Cognition and Emotion, 12, 191–220

Fridlund, A.J., Sabini J.P., Hedlund, L.E. Schaut, J.A., Shenker, J.I.,
and Knauer, M.J. (1990) “Audience effects on solitary faces during imagery: Displaying people in your head”, Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 14, 113–137.

Jaffe, E (2010) “The Psychology of Smiling” Association for Psychological Science, Observer Vol 23, No10 December 2010

Keltner D., and Bonanno, G (1997) “A Study of Laughter and Dissociation: Distinct Correlates of Laughter and Smiling During Bereavement”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 687–702.

Quinones-Garcia et al (2012) “Emotional strain of service with a smile” Paper presented at the British Psychological Society Division of Occupational Psychology Conference January 2012

Strack, F., Martin, L. & Stepper, S. (1988). “Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of the human smile: A nonobtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54, 768 – 777.

Why the RBS Bonus Furore Should Give All Employers Pause for Thought About Rewards

So ex-RBS boss Sir Fred Goodwin is now plain old “Fred the Pleb”, having been stripped of his Knighthood for leading (pushing?) the bank off the economic gang-plank.  And now the current boss, Stephen Hester has been forced to hand back his hefty share bonus after political and media furore in theUK.

Both of them were deprived of their performance-related honorific or financial reward because of a perceived or real mismatch between what they got and what they had actually achieved

Stephen Hester’s reward package was put together when he joined the organisation in 2008, just after the taxpayer bailout of the failing bank and the organisation was desperate to find the right person to get the bank back on track.

But the leaders clearly made a classic reward package error – they failed to align their reward system with the true values of the business.   In other words, the company misjudged the feelings of the new owners – ie, the millions of British taxpayers who through the government now effectively own a majority of shares in the bank..

It’s an easy mistake to make: and one that many other companies commit when creating reward systems for their employees.  Instead of ensuring that employee reward is linked to the values of the business (in this case influenced extensively by the public and the politicians), they look at micro-performance and reward for individual achievements measured in a simplistic quantitative way.

To be fair it is a complicated business. And it’s no easier getting a reward system right for customer service employees than it is for chief executives.  It involves addressing difficult strategic questions like:

Listen Carefully: You Might Make Someone Smile

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”

                                    Stephen R Covey: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

It goes without saying that listening to customers is central to successful and sustainable business.   The new focus on the “voice of the customer” requires organisations to use all sorts of methods to hear what customers are saying about them and their services and products.  A myriad of new technology offers to help capture these conversations and issues from call centres, social media, email correspondence and anywhere that customers are talking.

Current technology is semantics-led: it captures words and phrases used by customers and categorises them for analysis.  How many people are talking about delivery failure for example, could indicate that a company needs to investigate whether there are service improvements that should be made. But in the previous post I argue that the easiets place to start hearing the customers’ voice is from the people employed to be in contact with them. http://bit.ly/yvxFdV The sensitivity and sophistication of these data collection and analysis units is second to none.  However, these listening capabilities have the portential to be used in an even more sophisticated and engaging way, though it is not perhaps as easy as it looks.

It is entirely correct that organisations  should be making efforts to listen to customers.

But it’s a different thing entirely to say that customers need to be listened to.

It is more than data collection: it’s an emotional experience.  When we are listened to, someone else stays quiet and attentive and demonstrates through their occasional linguistic contributions that they have heard us, understood us and empathised with us.

The real listener brings no agenda.  They don’t say “I know, I know”. 

Yoo-hoo, Over Here, It’s the Voice of the Customer: Do You Compute?

In a recent article in HRmagazine.co.uk, Helen Murray laments the plight of call centre agents who have to listen to the same old customer complaints over and over again.

Too true.

Then she goes on to argue that this is because many companies don’t have the processes or solutions to appreciate the customer’s perspective.

Not true.

Many of the points that Helen Murray makes are valid and pertinent to a consideration of how to improve customer service. Listening to the “Voice of the Customer” will reveal invaluable information about how to improve strategy, service and products. Good organisations will use the means at their disposal to gather information from a wide range of sources including social media, call centre calls, forums, and digital and traditional correspondence. Many organisations are not doing this and are missing out on opportunities to learn and advance from a better understanding of what they are doing right and wrong in the eyes of their customers.

But there we part company.

Does Virtual Shopping Mean Curtains for the High Street or Are We Being Seduced Back into the Real World?

Question:  What distinguishes those retailers who will survive and thrive on the high street and those who will sink into oblivion under the weight of internet shopping?

Answer: An in-depth appreciation of the things that customers value about a direct retail experience.  The things that make the in-store experience something of genuine added value.

 The economies of scale and reduced overheads, and sheer shopping convenience achieved by a virtual store will never be matched by real life bricks and mortar shops, so the competitive advantage has to lie elsewhere.  Reducing prices and increasing ranges will only go so far in driving sales and eventually the squeeze on profits will force many shops into radical restructuring or liquidation.   Those who survive will have had a concerted re-think about what they are offering over and above the internet.

HMV, the iconic music and entertainment high street retailer in the UK is a case in point.  Despite announcing profits warning after dismal forecast during 2011, the company pushed on throughout the Christmas trading period and continues to insist that it will survive, despite a sales slump (8.1% decline in like for like sales for the 5 weeks to the end of December).

I fear the writing is on the wall HMV.  The internet offers identical products cheaper and without the trip into town.   Your store refurbishment programme is nice but not sufficient and your British stiff upper lip in the face of continual bad results is admirable but Titanically hopeless.  If you continue to do what you have always done, you will get what you have always got – and in your case that is consistently declining sales.  There is only one place it can end up: administration or disposal of assets.

There are many other examples of high street retailers struggling to survive against the combined might of internet retailing and the global economic depression: Blacks the outdoors retailer, Past Times the nostalgia gifts retailer, Hawkins Bazaar the toy shop, Barratts the shoe shop and Thorntons the chocolatier.  What unites them is that they are all long-established high street retailers dealing with the new world around them by doggedly sticking to doing what they have always done.  Perhaps they are reducing prices and making “efficiencies” but essentially, with the exception of an updated product range, when you enter their shops you might as well be stepping back ten years.

The high street is doomed.

But wait!  There is a new breed of high street shops that don’t seem to be declining.  In fact they are filling up the empty shop-fronts with bold new offers.  They include shops like Hollister, Build-a-Bear, and countless beauty emporiums. There is nothing new in the type of products they are offering – we are still buying clothes, toys and lotions as we always have - but  the way these companies sell them is different and they are expanding as quickly as others are falling around them.

Boxing Day: A Festive Experiment in Gratitude

I realise that the proverbial partying, frenzied gift buying or making and stocking up on traditional food items to mark the occasion is still going on in anticipation of Christmas day.  But in the last post before Christmas I wanted to take a moment to mention the following day, Boxing Day: because it offers a unique opportunity to anyone interested in the dynamics of service.

Boxing day is traditionally the day when householders give small gifts or money called a christmas box to people who provide a service to them during the year.  In days of old that might have been housemaids, stable boys and coachmen.  Nowadays it is more likely to be given to the people who provide a service to us during the year but often are not paid by us directly, including the lads and lasses who empty our bins, deliver our mail and bring the Sunday papers.  And it is generally given before Christmas since not many of these services operate on Boxing Day itself.

A Christmas box  is a small gift that recognises and acknowledges the service  these people provide throughout the year and is often given to people we rarely see but whose labour is a valued service and whom we fund through our local or central taxes.  

If it isn’t something you normally do, perhaps because you so rarely see these people, I wonder if you might give it a try this year?

Here’s why.  And let’s take the bin-men as an example.

1.  It communicates appreciation  

The bin-men may be paid by the taxes collected from us for all the services needed to keep our environment safe and clean, but the relationship between us is somewhat remote.  Despite benefiting from the services they provide, we are not their direct employers and I would hazard a guess that we don’t all rush out to give feedback on the quality of the job and a personal thank you each time we put out our bins.   

Why Aren’t You Helping Me, You Half-Witted, Time-Wasting, Rip-Off Merchant?

Speaking on the BBC this week, Guy Winch, psychologist and complaining expert, (or rather, expert on complaining) talked about the contradiction between our need to let off steam when we have experienced poor service, and our drive to resolve the problem.

Guy Winch points out that although we really want to vent our feelings when we have been let down by an organisation, if we do this vociferously to an innocent call centre representative, and then expect them to pull out all the stops to rectify the problem, we are simply barking up the wrong tree.

A recurrent theme here on Customer Service Psychology is how the failure to appreciate the emotions involved in customer service underlies and explains many of the problems that both organisations and customers have with service relationships and outcomes.   (http://bit.ly/reScVC ,  http://bit.ly/vMm9A8 etc.).

Once we lose sight of the fact that our own responses to disappointment in both personal and business relationships are emotional, as are the responses of any customer service employee, we are much less likely to get a satisfactory result.   Of course, that is not to say that by understanding and acting on this knowledge we will definitely secure what we want, but simply that it will give us the best chance of achieving it.  

Guy Winch suggests that we think clearly about what we want to achieve with a complaint.  We should pick our battles carefully, complaining when and only when it is important and using a technique he calls the “complaint sandwich”.  In other words, we should sandwich the meat of the complaint between two pieces of positive bread.  An example might go something like:

“I was really pleased to receive a delivery from you this morning as I love your products, but when I opened it I was really disappointed to see that there were 2 items missing.  This hasn’t happened before and I know that you work really hard to deliver everything to time and specification.  I wonder if you can resolve this issue for me?”

This “sandwich” metaphor will be familiar to many HR and line managers who have had training in how to deliver performance feedback to their staff where it is often known as the “feedback sandwich”.  Tell someone what they are really good at, tell them something they could improve and then feed back something else you have noticed that they are great at. This makes the point but lowers defensiveness by making it clear that strengths and effort have been recognised too.  Importantly, the conversation covers more good than bad.

Simply put, we find criticism difficult, but if it is wrapped up in an extolment of our many virtues and presented as a tiny little improvement that could make a huge difference, we can usually accept it. 

The principle stands in every relationship we have in life: with our children, our partners, our families, our friends, our colleagues, our neighbours, our bosses and our employees.  People will try harder if we are mostly positive, and at some level we probably all know that this is the case.

So why is it that we don’t use the complaint sandwich every time? 

Why do we often rant and rave?  Why do we launch into a vehement catalogue of complaints when we have been let down by a company, taken time away from other things we should be doing, kept on hold for 20 minutes and then put through to a call centre representative whose command of English means we have little chance of a productive conversation.  Well naturally because we are human:  an emotional, irrational and currently fuming human.  And, arguably, sometimes what we actually need most is to let off steam.  The effort involved in containing a basic emotional response to injustice and betrayal (which as previous posts have explored are often the emotions we are feeling, however much of a rational, sophisticated gloss we put on them) is just too much.  The need to restore balance and be heard is top of the list, and resolving the issue has to take second place.

A really intelligent company will understand this, and its representatives will be trained and supported in understanding and dealing with the emotions customers bring to their interactions with a company representative.  But most don’t, and crucially don’t invest in the recruitment, training, management and reward processes which enable front line customer-facing employees to cope with this.  So unfortunately, bubbling frustrations, obvious and unhelpful scripts, raised voices and terminations of calls are standard fare in the hubbub of service conversations around the world.

In fact, it became clear to me that there is a line of training provided to customer service staff that actively encourages customer service representatives to find reasons to terminate a customer interaction specifically as a result of the expression of emotions.  A snippet from the middle of a conversation I overheard between an irritated customer and a very uncomfortable car parts front desk clerk will demonstrate I hope.

Customer  “…so it just isn’t good enough to say you won’t provide a courtesy car while you repair my brand new car for the fourth time since I bought it two months ago.  I will need a courtesy car.”

Desk Clerk “If you raise your voice, Mrs Parker, I will terminate this conversation”

Customer  “I am not raising my voice, I am asking you to find me a car.”

Desk Clerk  “Right, OK.  Well I can’t do that, we don’t have one available.”

Customer “Yes you can.  It is utterly unacceptable to sell me a car that is falling apart when I made it clear I wanted a reliable car and then to leave me carless for a week. Do you think that is acceptable?

Desk Clerk (backing off)  “If you are insulting I am entitled to end this conversation right now”

Customer “ Fine.  Tell me where I have been insulting and we can agree to end it”  Pause  “Good, now you can try to find me a courtesy car.”

The front desk clerk was searching for the “legitimate reason” given to him in training that would enable him to walk away from the customer’s problem and associated emotion.  How much better it would have been to train him in listening to, acknowledging and sympathising with the customer’s perspective whilst not taking the emotions personally.   No additional investment required – just a simple change of approach which would demonstrate customer-centricity and result in improved customer loyalty. 

Guy Winch has teamed up with a call centre to experimentally examine the effect of training call centre employees in improved “emotional validation” behaviour.  Do call centre agents who listen and acknowledge emotions leave customers more satisfied with the service they have received?  It seems obvious when you think about it – people who are genuinely heard and acknowledged will feel better about the situation.  Yet there is little hard evidence out there from real life customer interactions and so Guy Winch’s results, whatever they show, will be welcome.   

Organisations work hard to deliver excellent products and services to their customers.  Perhaps they could work a little harder to understand how problems with them can influence the emotions of their customers.   They already do a great job in appreciating how emotions influence decisions to purchase, so it would complete the circle.

You’ve got it.  Feedback sandwich anyone?

 

Links

Guy Winch, author of “The Squeaky Wheel”.   More at http://www.guywinch.com

Is There Really Nothing That Can be Improved with John Lewis’s Customer Service?

Simon Goodley writing recently in the Guardian on the collapse of Carphone Warehouse’s Bestbuy venture with US partners, reports that Andy Street, the MD of John Lewis, believes the endeavour was doomed from the start.  He is reported as saying “The US model is keen prices combined with high service. The truth of the matter is that prices were already extremely keen and high service is being provided by us … Put that together and there was not a gap in the market.”

Well now this is interesting.  We know that John Lewis are consistently voted as having the highest customer service ratings on the high street.  But is Andy Street suggesting that the service John Lewis provides is so good that there is nothing more that customers could want?  (Read more here http://bit.ly/sy16Eu )  Or is he implying that John Lewis have understood the price that customers are willing to pay for the higher level of service provided as compared to the cheapest retailers?

If it’s the latter, and John Lewis knows the precise formula for the link between service level and the price customers are prepared to pay then there will be no stopping them and we can expect to see to see John Lewis achieving total high street domination in the next few years.  But this would be pretty miraculous.  The variables are too complex and dynamic to be completely confident that you know exactly what people will, and will continue to, pay as a premium for “high service”.

So perhaps he means that John Lewis sets the standard for “high service” and there was nowhere for Bestbuy to go with improved service levels.  But it’s a dangerous game to assume that the service levels you provide – good as they are – are the best that customers want or will come to expect in the future.  The gap in the market may not exist in the current market place but there is no reason whatsoever that other companies couldn’t raise the game.  John Lewis’s figures for customer satisfaction are high, but only marginally higher than its nearest competitors and a good way off 100% satisfaction.

This tells us that customers know there is more that can be done to improve the service they receive.  Customers are able to tell you who is best now, but this best isn’t the best it could be.  Aside from death and taxes, the only certainty is change, and any day now no gap in the market could become the gap that, by resting on comfortable and incomplete laurels, John Lewis didn’t see coming.

Anatomy of a Service Failure. How to Lose an Online Customer in 3 Easy Steps

Like a great many working parents, I do as much shopping as I can online.  It saves time and effort and reduces my carbon footprint.  Ok, I admit the last point is a happy coincidence and poor relation to the first two motivations, but I am working on it.

The point is that I and people like me are core customers of all the retailers who sell their wares in what everyone knows is a highly competitive marketplace.  However, I seem to have made the basic school-girl error of thinking that retailers understand that and more importantly that this makes me valuable to them and so every once in a while I am brought down to earth with an eye-opening bump. 

A bump that shocks me out of the inertia effect or “loyalty” so depended upon by banks, utility providers and others to keep us unthinkingly buying our services from the same organisations, despite increasing costs and the quiet downward creep of interest rates and value.  A bump which means I vow never to buy from that company again.  Service failure and no more chance of recovery.

For all the PR huff and puff about providing online ordering and delivery to make life easier and cheaper for us “valued” customers, the reality on the ground is rather different.  And it is pretty easy to lose a customer forever.  A recent experience with a big-name value retailer reminded me that there are 3 simple steps to making sure you don’t get another chance with the customer.