Customer
service is something that we encounter on a daily basis and it varies
tremendously and it has a huge impact on us as customers.
Take
the situation I was in recently…Bank holiday in a very busy & popular
garden centre and granted there were four tills available for me to pay, so no
queues, which is good. However the
complete lack of interest of the person serving would put me off going
again. She clearly was not
interested in me, made no attempt to make eye contact with me or have a conversation
and barely was able to say ‘thank you’ for my business.
And
that is the point….it is your business.
If you do not have customers you will not have a business. How do you know how your customers are
treated when you are not there?
Sure, they will be model staff when you are around because you are the
boss, but what happens when you are not there? In the retail/service world this is often on a Sunday or BH
Monday (of which we have had a few recently!!) because all the ‘suits’ are
off!!
So
that is why ‘mystery shopping’ can ensure that you are monitoring and measuring
the levels of service your customers receive. It is no good spending hours of training time on teaching
& encouraging good customer service if you do not then test it out to see
if it actually works.
I
have had a lot of experience of mystery shopping for a number of retail &
service companies over the last ten years. During this time I have seen the best and the worst of
customer service. I am not
suggesting that you should have sycophantic staff who are ‘all over’ your
customers but I am sure that you want them to be attentive and interested even
if your customer is only spending £4.99.
The
mystery shop can take the form of an actual customer visit or telephone calls
where the shopper is looking for specific standards of performance from your
staff. This may be if the order is
repeated back to you in a restaurant or if you are thanked for your
custom. It is somewhat subjective
on the attitude but if you as the ‘customer’ do not feel wanted then that is
not acceptable.
In
my opinion if you are offering customer service in your business and you are saying in your marketing how
good you are at it, you should be monitoring how effective it is!!
Thanks
for your time,
Suzanne
Unsworth
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