Just image for a moment that you have a time machine and can travel back to 1950s Britain. Your aim once there is to go to a local bank and conduct a simple transaction.
What sort of experiences would you have?
Well you might be whistling the lastest tune by a young man called Elvis Presley. So as you’re walking along and humming “are you lonesome tonight,.. lonesome tonight..” you stroll though the door of the bank and within space of time speak to a member of staff who would do their best to help you conduct your business as smoothly as possible.
Now get back into your time machine and travel forward to the year 2007. You want to contact your bank again. This time you pick up the phone. You receive the message “All our advisers are busy assisting customers at the moment, please hold while we try to connect you to an adviser”. In your frustration you gaze out of your office window at a newspaper stand. The headline reads “Blair to go”.
Personal service seems to be an old-fashioned concept in 2007. Some businesses seem to think that we don’t mind holding the line listening to endless banal messages. Usually if you do get through to someone you are wound-up because you have had to wait for so long so are more likely to suffer from “phone-rage” and be less receptive to solving any problems.
If only they thought again and aimed to put personal service at the centre of their operations the advantages would be numerous:-
1. If people can speak to a real person, they will automatically feel in a better frame of mind. Their query is being handled on a personal level.
2. The customer is more likely to be in a better mood and receptive to solving problems. Less "phone rage".
3. Problems are more easily solved in a person to person interaction. All the customer wants is for someone to listen and be receptive to their difficulties not just sell them another product.
The other day I popped into a local watch shop because I had lost the small piece that clips the pieces of my watch band together. When I explained the problem, the proprietor said that he thought he might have one lying around. He found it, attached it to my watch band – and charged me nothing! Where do you think I’ll go when I need a new watch band or even a new watch?
I am not suggesting that everything relating to customer service was better in the 1950s. We now have many more convenient ways of contacting businesses. For example, via the internet or phone. However, it sometimes seems that we have lost an important aspect of human interaction.
Lets jump in the time machine for one final journey moving forward to the year 2027. Once again, we want to try to contact a bank. This time we don’t personally visit it, or pick up the phone or even go on-line. We just touch a screen in our living room and are connected to a personal banking advisor. We are once again face-to-face with someone but of course via a screen.
Could the brave new world of 20 years time come full circle back to something closers to personal service?
However, to change this area today in the year 2007, would not cost the earth and could be of great benefit to both businesses and customers. As the American Economist Thomas Sowell once said “Politeness and consideration for others is like investing pennies and getting dollars back”.