Customer Service: What's in store for you?

Our contractor survey is a great indicator of an Umbrella company's ongoing customer service levels. Every company says they look after you the best, but do they really?

This survey represents the opinions of thousands of contractors and their own every day experiences with their Umbrella company.

Lessons to learn

David Jackson was part of the team that founded the Customer Experience Awards 14 years ago. Exposure to the customer service practices of thousands of UK companies has helped Jackson to formulate this list list of the ten most important lessons:

1. Customer intelligence is based on three questions: Who are our chosen customers? What are their needs and expectations? How are we doing in meeting their needs?

2. Understand how customers think. Few firms have begun to consider how they can test for the emotional elements of the customer experience.

3. Trust in your people. It is people that deliver great service, not companies. The award winners all give their staff as much freedom, choice and opportunity as possible.

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4. Work for and with people who believe in service excellence. If the people at the top of an organisation don't believe in service excellence, it won't happen.

5. Master the art of organisation design. Service excellence is a function of how the organisation is designed. Its key elements are what the leaders do and how effective management processes are in facilitating the desired outcome.

6. Make the link to the bottom line. Masters of service excellence understand customers who have a great experience are more likely to continue to buy from their companies and more likely to recommend them to others.

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7. Make everything a little better every day. Leaders in service excellence train their people to drive continuous improvement.

8. Understand that the future will be different. Technology is changing the way service is delivered all the time. Failing to grasp the opportunities and threats presented will mean failure.

9. Learn from your mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes but winners learn from them, giving their frontline people as much freedom as possible to fix problems. When individuals or teams make mistakes, use them as opportunities to learn.

10. Make things easier for customers. Too many firms still make buying unnecessarily difficult - for both retail and business customers - with unclear pricing, insufficient information and poor support & service. Customer patience is limited.