Last week our Customer Hub team won the "Best customer service" accolade in the Housing Excellence Awards 2012. It's some achievement and I salute that team for their fantastic successes in such a short time. The next morning I heard an item on President Obama's decision to support gay marriage. It wasn't the issue that caught my attention, rather the voice of a commentator saying that this decision by Obama represented the so called "Golden Rule". The supreme edict was to treat others as you would want to be treated and how important that rule was.
And now the bit that links these two bits of news.
On the face of it, the Golden Rule might be thought of as the epitome of good service. But it misses the mark. I'm left-handed (I think I might have mentioned that before in this blog) and all I can say is that the world was designed by and for right-handed people.
OK, that's a slight exaggeration, but take filling in the stub of the the humble (and now virtually defunct) cheque book. Easy as you like for the right-handers but something to make a left-hander all fingers and thumbs.
The Golden Rule - "do as you would be done by" - worked for the right-handed cheque book designer, not the minority of left-handed users.
So when it comes to delivering great service you need to go beyond the Golden Rule and have systems that understand and prioritises the way the customer wants to be treated. That means treating each customer as an individual, using listening skills to diagnose the real issue behind their call, taking as much time as it takes to complete the call and being able to marshal the whole of the organisation's resources to be able to deliver the answer the customer needs.
And that's how our Customer Hub was set up. We have no measures of the number of calls handled by each operator, or the average length of time each call takes - we don't think our customers are interested in those. What we measure is whether we resolve the customer's issue "first time" - that means by the person who picks up the call in the first place.
We don't have any of the "Press 1 for this" and "Press 2 for that". There is no "you are number five in the queue, please hold because your call is important to us" - because again, we asked what customers wanted and they certainly didn't want that! As an aside, our staff didn't want to work in a system like that either, fearing de-skilling, hectoring management and not being able to go to the toilet when they needed! They've supported our alternative approach, so much so that turnover within the team over its first two years has been virtually non-existent.
Our approach gets us recognised in awards like last week's. But that's not the point. We do it for our customers and as they consistently tell us it works for them and that's good enough for me.
And now the bit that links these two bits of news.
On the face of it, the Golden Rule might be thought of as the epitome of good service. But it misses the mark. I'm left-handed (I think I might have mentioned that before in this blog) and all I can say is that the world was designed by and for right-handed people.
OK, that's a slight exaggeration, but take filling in the stub of the the humble (and now virtually defunct) cheque book. Easy as you like for the right-handers but something to make a left-hander all fingers and thumbs.
The Golden Rule - "do as you would be done by" - worked for the right-handed cheque book designer, not the minority of left-handed users.
So when it comes to delivering great service you need to go beyond the Golden Rule and have systems that understand and prioritises the way the customer wants to be treated. That means treating each customer as an individual, using listening skills to diagnose the real issue behind their call, taking as much time as it takes to complete the call and being able to marshal the whole of the organisation's resources to be able to deliver the answer the customer needs.
And that's how our Customer Hub was set up. We have no measures of the number of calls handled by each operator, or the average length of time each call takes - we don't think our customers are interested in those. What we measure is whether we resolve the customer's issue "first time" - that means by the person who picks up the call in the first place.
We don't have any of the "Press 1 for this" and "Press 2 for that". There is no "you are number five in the queue, please hold because your call is important to us" - because again, we asked what customers wanted and they certainly didn't want that! As an aside, our staff didn't want to work in a system like that either, fearing de-skilling, hectoring management and not being able to go to the toilet when they needed! They've supported our alternative approach, so much so that turnover within the team over its first two years has been virtually non-existent.
Our approach gets us recognised in awards like last week's. But that's not the point. We do it for our customers and as they consistently tell us it works for them and that's good enough for me.
I too am very pleased with president obama's speach on accepting gay marraige, some may say this is just for votes, who cares they are humans and should be treated fairly through life just like every one else.
ReplyDeleteon the other note the golden rule of customer service at THT is one to be proud of, the staff are very professional and try to deal with your call immediatly, this is speaking from experience as a tennant and customer. I am so proud to be a tennant, the staff are friendly and approachable