GO ON. BRING ME EXCITEMENT.

OK, I’ve changed my mind. Now the time’s right for some excitement. A surprise. A bit of spontaneity. Perhaps a bit of danger. In cricket that series in Australia sums up how most of us feel: lethargic, disengaged, disappointing. Depressingly the effect of nearly two years of Covid has been to make many of us rather dull. 

I had underestimated the importance and the effect of travel and adventure. I realised I was missing the frisson of excitement of being in an airport, the anticipation of airline food (isn’t that crazy when that food is generally dreadful?) and the thrill of taking off. I understood I had aged wearily and become a housebound Victor Meldrew (that geriatric misery of an antihero from a bygone BBC TV series.)

Yet the world is providing us with plenty of excitement and drama. At home we have the impending defenestration of a Prime Minister in the pantomime of British politics (“behind you Boris”.) The sort of thing you’d expect in Patagonia or Ecuador not the UK.  In France an election in April which Macron is determined to win. When he called our own Prime Minister “a clown” he showed the sort of restraint and insight a President needs. 

In America the mid-terms are impending and as far as the world is concerned the contest will be dramatic and potentially tragic. It’s something we can’t keep our eyes off. In Australia, or as someone described it “the biggest prison in the world,” the politicians are playing their own version of tennis with Novak Djokovic or Mr Forgetful as he’s also known. 

Sweep around and in China there’s incredulity at the news about a lady of theirs. MI5 sent out an alert and picture of the woman named Christine Lee on Thursday alleging she was "involved in political interference activities" in the United Kingdom on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. Barry Gardner, a Labour Shadow Minister, was allegedly paid £400,000 by Ms Lee over the past years. A spy in plain sight…bizarre. 

We are spectators of non-stop high drama and life changing events. But it’s making us even more stressed and depressed. 

Yet on Saturday I read about a 19-year-old who’s just broken the record for being the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe. Her name is Zara Rutherford, she took 5 months to do it and she accomplished it in a Microlight. What an adventure. What enterprise. How refreshing.

We have been fed a diet of rules, restrictions, health scares and statistics which has turned many of us into scaredy cats and bores. What a catastrophic cocktail. I met a bright young person who lives nearby waiting to cross the road on Saturday. We talked about how strange the world was. She told me she was supposed to be going to a local comedy club but that she’d probably give it a miss - “too many people crammed together laughing” she explained. I told her to go. I wouldn’t have done that two weeks ago.  

It's time to change the way we behave and look at things in a variety of ways. We need to:

• Get busy

• Get talking on the phone to several friends or better still face to face

• Go to one event next week – gallery, cinema, theatre

• Go for a long walk

• Go out to a restaurant

And then plan a series of “adventures” like going to places you’ve never been before.

Check your adrenalin levels, happiness index and sense of energy. Excitement and the thrill of the unknown are needed. Kerpow!!!

EVERY LITTLE...

No this is not about Tesco which is doing much better under Dave Lewis. Before he came along a better strapline might have been “Every dozy dinosaur needs a kick up the arse”. Having said that I have no idea why they’re targeting Aldi with their new Jack’s stores.

They are going down-and-dirty and as an occasional Aldi shopper I know it’s not down-and-dirty but just has lots of low cost, high quality products. Professor Mark Ritson in Marketing Week said Tesco should be trying to be a better Tesco and not trying to be like Aldi. Aldi is brilliant at being Aldi -  like a shark, ruthless and very efficient. This applies to Lidl too. Both examples of great retailing and high productivity.

But this blog’s not about Tesco it’s about the middle class darling Waitrose or as it’s now known Waitrose and Partners. Warning bell. An expensive rebranding exercise and  the worst profits for years. Does any connection spring to mind?

Let me confess two things. I like the partnership model and I like shopping at Waitrose. But for my loyalty to be maintained I need:
- It to stock what I want
- Its fruit and vegetables to be pristine – they charge enough to guarantee this surely?
- Its service to be exceptional

Recently little niggles have started to occur – rotten bananas, under-ripe avocados which ripen to black nastiness, constant stock-outs, no more Warburton’s bread that we like replaced by private label that we don’t like, slow service in the café, no more free coffee in the cafe on the Waitrose card, serve yourself coffee which runs out and is very messy.

It’s all very trivial, a series of little irritations but they combine to make me feel less loyal. And then it compounds…there are fewer staff around; where’s the presence of a jovial manager the sort who welcomes and is omnipresent; the rumour that you should stop using your Waitrose loyalty card because after a month the algorithm notices and the “lost customer” warning will kick in and you’ll start getting big discount vouchers to lure you back, much bigger than any “loyal” customer gets.

Little niggles build into monster gripes lead to customer loss. The “that’s typical” Victor Meldrew moments keep on happening. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do. I was told about a series of disasters at a hotel with an important customer. In desperation the manager offered a free meal with wonderful wine. All was wonderfully well until the sommelier spilt a glass of Lynch-Bages down the wife’s white dress.

We spend a lot of time talking about big pictures in business but big pictures can be ruined by a series of small smudges. Unless the process works brilliantly and consistently, unless that manager is leading from the front one thing can lead to another.

Every little cock-up leads to customers walking away – and who can blame them. Let’s not forget the maxim “the customer’s always right (even when they’re wrong”.)

TICKLING FEET OF CLAY

Peter Lederer used to be Chairman of Gleneagles and was the most impressive thinker about customer service I’ve known. He described the circle of doom in which however hard you try to make amends to a discontented customer you manage to make it worse. You know the sort of thing …the waiter carrying the complimentary glass of champagne to Mrs Grumble trips up and soaks her.

I think it’s what used to be call the feminine argument…”and another thing” - because it seems true that when one thing goes wrong the victim becomes a Victor Meldrew list-maker of errors - “typical, just typical”.

My feet of clay award goes to the John Lewis Partnership. The organisation is one I admire and Charlie Mayfield is the most impressive CEO I know. I once made an observation to him about something Waitrose had done which struck me as wrong. He replied carefully, courteously and signed it. Brilliant stuff.

Recently Waitrose, my Waitrose has been unable to put a foot right. I got rotten, stinking asparagus twice and was a sent a rotten response by Customer Service Bracknell (“Thanks for letting us know that one of our products was not of the standard you expected”- no the standard of reeking rottenness was well below par!) I bought some tea and most of the bags were split (Twining’s fault but I blamed Waitrose); Mr Sheen no longer stocked (black mark); they never bother to replenish the cups of green charity vouchers at check-out (meanies - don’t care about charity); a chicken on sale on August 29th with a sell-by-date of August 23rd. I told them to remove it from sale and they looked at me as though I were a troublemaker (which is just what I’d become). And the guy at checkout was sullen and unhelpful.

John Lewis Oxford Street fared just as badly. I queued 20 minutes for coffee because the 4th floor café was understaffed); the queues were worse and impenetrably slowed down by the jolly conversation of the staff in Greeting Cards and, finally, an American shopper in household appliances who was puce in the face screeched her outraged complaints with ripe language for being ignored.

These unrelated incidents do not constitute a case for the prosecution. The organisation is great and does most of what it does brilliantly.  But I wonder if I’m getting a preview of incipient problems.

Lucy Kellaway wrote about the customer revolution recently:

“At Amazon, the customer wins — and the employee does not. The company may not have chosen the most morally acceptable trade-off. But it has laid bare this fact of economic life: when some win, others lose.”

At John Lewis the employees are partners and have a lot of power. I wonder if the smell of complacency and a slowdown in the mission to improve is what I’m detecting. I wonder if others are sharing my missing of delight in the place.

But unless this welling rage goes I’m going to have to shop elsewhere.