IT SERVES US RIGHT

 It Serves Us Right

Two things on my agenda are productivity and customer service. Often the two are linked. The quicker a purchasing transaction happens the greater the productivity but speed carries a cost. And that’s the absence of taking time to cement a relationship. 

A friend of mine briefly worked at the call centre for a global brand of amongst other things baby products. She was berated for taking too long talking to customers and, when she thought necessary, cheering them up (“that’s not necessary.” She was told). The most successful people in that call centre (by their standards) were foreign with limited, transactional vocabulary. Productivity trumped building a meaningful brand relationship.

We’re building business models in which increasing short- term profit is more important than investing in building trusted brands with whom customers can have a conversation. So it serves us right.

Whilst Jack Welch, one-time, legendary CEO of General Electric, said technology would eventually replace the need for people to be involved in a purchasing transaction, he still fervently believed in consumer satisfaction. Figure that one!

Recently I bought my wife some cosmetics but the delivery address the “system” picked up was a previous one we’d lived at 7 years ago. Try as I might there was no mechanism to phone and say “I goofed, please put it right”. Try as I might there was nothing in the list of pre-selected issues that corresponded with “I’m an idiot. I chose the wrong address” option. And so cheerful emails thudded in saying “we’re delivering to…WRONG ADDRESS… in 48 hours.” I solved it eventually. But I’d wanted a human being saying cheerfully “Don’t worry. Could happen to anyone. There. All sorted.”  What actually  happened was a standoff between human frailty and faultless technology. Man versus Machine with man helplessly losing. 

Now this isn’t the futile lament of a senior about how much better things were before self-service and shopping online.  Because they weren’t. Despite the current “crisis” our world is better, richer in choice and cheaper than it was. We now have “Influencers” rather than “Brand Champions” – not an improvement in my view. But the one thing beginning to disappear is someone on the end of a phone who calmly helps you. 

Exception: NatWest have introduced a direct line for over-60s where you get through straightaway and the person who answers has time and the inclination to do whatever is required. 

More exceptions: Serious Readers. Victoria Health. Richer Sounds. And Waitrose who once turned me from a gibbering wreck to a normal human being in seconds. Everyone tells me Apple is the best in quantity and quality of Customer service. A friend said they’d sorted out a tricky issue regarding the validity of insurance on an Apple product bought in Germany pre-Brexit with aplomb. 

So, yes, great personal, customer service exists but I fear the finance people often see it as  an expense they’d like to eliminate. Its shaky existence reflects many businesses’ attitude to brand building and customers.

I recall a marketer at Heinz, that once-great company which marketing professionals adored, saying they thought of their consumers as two housewives having a cheerful conversation with each other over the garden fence. 

 It’s a romantic concept no doubt but you cannot build a brand that’s loved by technology alone.

Anyway I love romantic concepts but it takes two to tango and when I said “it serves us right” I was also thinking that the behaviour of many customers has deteriorated. We’ve got worse at saying thank you and smiling.

Try it. It’ll change the customer service that you get. 

HAVE WE FORGOTTEN EXCELLENCE?

Forty years ago Tom Peters, a renowned management consultant, writer and speaker, co-authored a book called “In Search of Excellence.” It caused something of a stir as Peters assumed the pioneer role of excellence-discoverer.

The book suggested that excellent businesses had specific attributes: 

…”flat anti-hierarchical structures; innovation and entrepreneurship; small numbers of corporate and middle management; staff reward systems based on contribution rather than position or length of service; brain power rather than muscle”. 

It sold 4 million copies and was described as the best management book of all time. Sadly 40 years on we seem to have learnt nothing. We haven’t forgotten excellence we just never seem to have known precisely what it is or how to get it.

John Neil, the CEO of Unipart, the multinational logistics, supply chain, manufacturing and consultancy company, once said to me

“the trouble with British Industry is it doesn’t know what good is.”

Forget excellence, he seemed to suggest, being good would be a marked improvement.

Instead of excellence we learnt about being the “lowest cost producer”, of moving production to wherever to get goods made cheaply and cut labour costs. MBAs talked about “exits”(not physical ways out but monetary ways out) or, to be blunt, selling businesses for as much money as possible to regardless of whom they are. That’s why the most excellent of restaurants – the Wolseley Group – majority owned in Thailand by Minor Hotels having put it into administration have ousted that King of Customer Service. Jeremy King, its founder. 

No, I’m not xenophobic but it’s wasteful to build an excellent business and then sell it to corporations (mainly overseas) whose interests are purely about money, burnishing their image or whose cultural values are so strongly at variance with their acquisition. That’s why in-shoring has become a new vogue  (it means bringing production back home), that’s why Waterstones (currently Russian owned but left well alone by him) run by the excellent James Daunt of Daunt Books, does so well. Under the previous management, I was told they talked about skus (stock keeping units) not books, and it drove staff in the stores crazy.

When so many companies in the UK are parcelled off to foreign business or private equity, firms whose raison d’être is lots of money, it’s unsurprising that the focus has shifted from rock solid, immutable values about product excellence and customer service.

One place where this hasn’t happened in Richer Sounds. Founded in 1978 the business was 100% owned by Julian Richer, the founder and managing director of the company, who in 2019 sold 60% of its shares to an employee ownership trust. It’s feted for its customer service and standards of management.

Seeking to become just another big ‘cheese’ is also relatively absent in the food business where founders are obsessed with quality. The TV chef James Martin is particularly appealing in his appetite for excellence and singles out the French:

“What I love about Lyon is they don’t care what people think about what they do or if they even like it, they know, they just know themselves that it’s brilliant”

On a TV programme he wandered around “Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse - Lyon Indoor Food  Market” talking to camera, ecstatic about the supreme excellence of the food there.

The French care jealously about Comté cheese and the right Cassoulet recipe. The Italians are similarly fussy about Spaghetti Carbonara.

Their ROI is in heaven. Their being excellent matters more than being rich.

How ironic that Julian Richer in denial of his name, like so many chefs, could be much richer but instead leads an excellent UK business. 

ZIG WHEN THE OTHERS ZAG

Zig when the others zag was an expression often used in advertising by admen trying to persuade clients to separate themselves from squabbling competitors, all with similar products fighting for consumers’ attention.

As we edge out of lockdown and think about marketing again this approach seems relevant especially for banks.

Banks deservedly get a bad press. They mostly seem to dislike their customers and would much prefer to operate in the headier space of investment banking and stuff like collateral instruments and derivatives. To be fair NatWest, with whom I bank, seem to have their telephone banking act much more together now, maybe because their staff are working at home and not in call centres.

As others close their branches why not open a bunch of micro banks in those high street sites emptied by the impact of Covid? Become the friendly face of banking providing financial advice to the elderly, less well off and to the mystified young. Work with government in helping them talk to those difficult to reach with helpful advice. Be great at customer service. You’d be alone whilst others chase the big-dollar business. 

Not everything inevitably goes in one direction as Justin King, one time CEO of Sainsbury’s discovered when he said in 2012: "the high street is dead, out of town hypermarkets will take over". Think again about those soulless warehouses, Justin.  

The High Street is in a parlous state now for obvious reasons but in a world where we’re trying to reduce the use of the car and where local councils need the income from high street shopping to increase isn’t it time to be more creative? I’m irritated by the view that market forces matter most and by people saying “let the market decide.” The reality is the market (aka consumers/the general public) have little voice before landlords offload prime sites to betting shops, discounters and charity shops.

We need more bookshops like Daunts, more small upmarket cinemas like the Electric Cinema in Portobello – clean, with comfy chairs and no fast food and popcorn – I’ll never go to a filthy old Odeon again. 

We need more exciting pre-loved clothing outlets done well, more wine bars, more stationers, more examples of retail brilliance like Richer Sounds or delicatessens like relaunched Dean and Deluca and Wholefoods. We need more of those wonderful hardware stores which stock everything and specialist shops that sell board games, hats, gloves, shirts and bagels. We need more colour and fun. 

Which brings me to the king of online. Amazon. They’ve reshaped our expectations for speed which is great but maybe now it’s time to zig again. When you’re as good as they are any blemish shows up. Recently a few errors have happened with us. A food supplement normally available overnight isn’t available for two weeks. (We got next day delivery from another supplier.) Deliveries are occasionally abandoned on the doorstep. Amazon is beginning to smell big and lethargic rather like Woolworth did as it reached the crest of its growth.

A delivery service to match Amazon should be easily arranged on a local basis in places like Brighton, Chester, Tunbridge Wells and Marylebone in London where the spirit of enterprise thrives. But overall  has there ever been a better opportunity for all the high streets to come out of the restrictive lives we’ve led with a blaze of colour, a fanfare of excitement and the ability to display and, also, to deliver to your home?

What we most of all need is pizzazz. In the lockdown so many already have cracked logistics brilliantly.

MAKING M&S RICHER - OR NOT

After my last piece on M&S I noticed Julian Richer, the CEO and  100% shareholder of market leading Richer Sounds was acting as a consultant and mentor to Steve Rowe the M&S CEO.

Julian is a corporate rock star and runs a brilliant company. However I cannot think of two businesses less alike than Richer Sounds and M&S.

And Julian is a man.

Another man to join the man-heavy senior team.

Surely the advice it most needs is from a just retired opinionated and energetic woman?

And Julian is not a woman.