“The customer always leaves happy” is the first and the second is “The lifetime value of each customer is the most important thing”. Not only are these neat phrases, the kind of which you might find in many an organisation striving to put service value at the heart of the business, they are priciples  which the management then take and drive it’s performance.

Net promoter score is now there key indicator and this means scoring 9′s or 10′s in a scale from  1- 10 on the likelihood of recommending JL to a friend. They are currently the highest scoring retail group in the UK.

When faced with a difficult customer or a customer wanting money back “The Lifetime value of the customer” mantra is utilised. No referring up the chain, no delays, but a simple trusted delegated decision to be taken based on the likely outcome of acceding to the customer’s request – or not. It didnt’ take long for one of the attendees at Lesley Bannatyne’s presentation to ask the question that this must lead to staff just “giving things away”.  “Not so” was the clear cut answer. But then we get into the nature of the organisation at John Lewis where the partners (employees) are all stakeholders in the business. This model is unique to John Lewis but it is compelling in it’s evidence that ownership produces highly engaged staff and very accountable leadership. Any conversation, at any level within the business, can be interrupted to deal with a customer and any member of staff can ask a manager why any decision was made.    Simple, clear and compelling. Little wonder they excel – and turn in some of the best profits in UK retailing.

Commenting on the award Allan Ross, FIF’s Managing Director said “This award is welcome and a great boost to our people when many businesses seem to be forgetting service in the pursuit of efficiency and reduced costs”.  To win the award the company had to demonstrate that it had clear customer service objectives, a strategy to pursue them, links to business performance, customer care management,staff development and that all of this had led to growth. These are a useful set of criteria and not a million miles away from Flannigan Consulting’s “Competing on Service” approach which FIF had begun using in 2007. A great deal of effort has gone into pursuing this approach and now is the time to push hard on selling and marketing their ability to genuinely demonstrate that good or great service doesn’t happen by accident.

On the night of the award Allan Ross said to me “this is as much your award as it is ours”.  Magnanimous words happily received………mind you drink had been taken!

So if you are riding this out, surviving and on the odd sunshine filled day feeling that you may be seeing the dawn of some real new opportunities then you may be in a great position to find more customers and fill the gap that may have appeared. That is you may if the nature of buying hasn’t been radically shaken up or in fact new rules written. Perhaps there is greater conservatism in the buying process, more concern for the small print and getting the contract right.

Buying on price certainly prevails in a good number of scenarios and the pressure is on to offer value and be clear on that. Beyond that how do we win over the new customer or in fact court the previously somnolent one? The  offer of the latest, newest, fastest, would seem to hold less apppeal. The product or the service itself is becoming or is a “given”. What else will tilt the balance?

 TRUST.

“OK so the product service sounds about right for the price but who are these guys? What have they done before? What management resource are they putting into this? Who have they worked for? Who owns them?”

A series of trust questions are now elbowing into the sales and buying negotiation. Underlying this are a set of three elements of trust

1. Trusting competetence

2. Trusting reliabilty

3. Trusting their motives

The intention of all is not under question more an insidious worry about how they will deliver. Even in good times a ton of business is lost not because of fundamentals of business intention but by confidence and trust being lost by the neglect of the little things, the build up of small failures of delivery or the lack of caring response.

One major antidote that is working for clients is the use of “Customer Expectation” statements. These are a set of fundamentals for presentation and discussion with customers and a set of live or die conditions for managing your company’s delivery. As clients and I have been finding so few companies have such things and there is good news – this is a competitive opportunity and those who have been working with this are very well positioned to “Compete on Service”. Contact me to find out more about how to make this happen.