Is Your "Customer Service" About Your Customer Or Is It About You?

Is Your “Customer Service” About Your Customer Or Is It About You?

Is Your “Customer Service” About Your Customer Or Is It About You? image

Customer ServiceAs a business, is your customer service really all about your customer – or is it all about you?

I recently took out a new home insurance policy with Swinton, a long established and well recognised UK Insurance company. The process of buying my insurance was straight forward – I popped the relevant details into their on-line quoting system on their web-site, found a competitive quote that suited me, and paid for the policy on-line using credit card. Simple, and effective.

I received an e-mail back confirming my purchase, and was told that my insurance documents would be posted to me within 7 days. Posted? Hmmm. As somebody who lives his life virtually paper free – keeping all my documents electronically – I didn’t care for the thought of receiving a large insurance policy document via the post, a document that I’d then have to scan in to store electronically.

Customer Courtesy Calls

As if by magic, I then received a telephone call from a nice chap from my local Swinton branch – ringing to introduce himself and to make sure I had everything I needed.

This was a very welcome call and I applaud Swinton for taking this route, as in my experience telephone always trumps e-mail for building a relationship.

After introducing himself, the chap from Swinton asked if I had any questions. “Yes. It’s a little inconvenient to have the documents posted to me, do you think you could e-mail them across” I asked.

“No. I’m afraid we can’t” he replied “We only send out printed policies” the man “explained”.

I went on to ask that if he was going to print the document and post it to me, could he not just e-mail me the document instead?

“I’m afraid we don’t have external e-mail” he shared. Rather flabbergasted, and wondering if I’d stumbled into a time paradox which had connected my call to an insurance salesman from the 1970’s, I expressed surprise, and asked him if he had a scanner in the office. I rather suspect this gentleman knew where my line of questioning was leading, and so told me “No, I’m afraid not”.

(As a side note, for any IT companies reading – Swinton Birmingham Kings Heath branch don’t own a scanner nor do they have external e-mail. If I still owned an IT company, I’d be giving them a call to see if I could help modernise their office infrastructure!)

The Sales Call

It’s at this point that, having to my mind rather blustered through the “Is there anything I can help you with?” and failed to help me at all, the true nature of the call started to become apparent.

“Can I take a moment to tell you about our Motor Insurance Policy?” he asked.

“No thank-you”. I replied.

“But I think we could save you money. Can I just get a few details so we can check?”.

“No thank-you. I’m not interested”. I replied.

At this point I realised the call wasn’t a “courtesy” call at all, but a call to upsell me to Swinton’s other services.

What went wrong with this “Customer Service?”

Now, I’ve no problem with being upsold to. If this individual from Swinton had tried to help me with my electronic document issue, or even empathised with me and my situation, I would have happily continued the conversation.

If, unable to e-mail me the file he was about to print, this chap had offered to scan the same document back in and e-mail it to me as an electronic file, I would have gratefully shared all my insurance renewal dates with him – from my motor car to my pet insurance.

Even if the chap had empathised with me, and said he would feed back to his manager and/or Head Office of my frustrations, I would have appreciated the gesture and continued the call.

But he didn’t – and he gave the impression that he wasn’t actually interested in “Customer Service” at all, he wanted to skip straight to “Customer Selling”.

In other words, the call wasn’t about me at all – it was about him.

How it makes the customer feel

Only an hour into my becoming a new customer, my perception of Swinton Insurance had changed from a positive outlook to the view that they are at best, old fashioned, and at worst, unhelpful.

This view was, unfortunately, compounded when I took to Twitter to ask Swinton why they were unable to embrace e-mail.

OL1

I never received a response (although I did receive a Re-Tweet from what I can assume is a fellow frustrated Swinton customer). In fact, like many Corporates, it appears Swinton Group don’t “get” Twitter – using it as a loudspeaker to shout about themselves from, rather than seize the opportunity to use it as a platform to encourage engagement with their customers and prospective customers.

image

Now it might seem I’m unfairly picking upon Swinton here. Unlike Swinton, many Insurance companies would never dream of picking up the telephone to introduce themselves to a new customer at all. But by doing so, Swinton have to understand that they’re opening themselves up to customer feedback and be prepared to actually listen.

  • If your company is going to make “Customer Service” telephone calls – be prepared to offer customer service.
  • If your company is going to establish a presence on Twitter – be prepared to engage in conversation.

In both instances, I think Swinton have taken an opportunity to serve their customers and based how they offer this “Customer Service” on how they can sell more product instead.

I’d like to suggest to Swinton that the selling part comes after you’ve built trust, not before.

 

The Lesson for your Business

Is your “Customer Service” actually focused on your customer, or is it, in reality, all about you?

Are your “Customer Service” processes rigid or flexible? If your customers throws you a question that falls outside of the usual “script” are your staff empowered to do something to help, or are they shackled by trying to subdue or eliminate the question and quickly move on?

Ultimately, do your customers feel that your business is there to help them – or pay lip-service to the term “Customer Service”?

 

photo credit: Seattle Municipal Archives via photopin cc

RICHARD TUBB

Richard Tubb is one of the best-known experts within the global IT Managed Service Provider (MSP) community. He launched and sold his own MSP business before creating a leading MSP media and consultancy practice. Richard helps IT business owner’s take back control by freeing up their time and building a business that can run without them. He’s the author of the book “The IT Business Owner’s Survival Guide” and writer of the award-winning blog www.tubblog.co.uk

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Comments

15 thoughts on Is Your “Customer Service” About Your Customer Or Is It About You?

CHRIS MCGLASSON

11TH JUNE 2013 13:35:38

Great article Richard. Thanks for sharing.

RICHARD TUBB

14TH JUNE 2013 09:33:55

Chris - my pleasure, thanks for the kind feedback!

VIC

17TH JULY 2013 16:28:31

Have you tried using the MySwinton portal via the Swinton website? You can register to view your documents online. :-)

RICHARD TUBB

18TH JULY 2013 16:56:26

Vicky - thanks for the heads-up on the MySwinton option. I didn't realise it was available! Ideally the Swinton staff member might have notified me! :-)

BRANDON PHIPPS

7TH NOVEMBER 2013 02:40:32

I like it. Something that we started doing from the beginning was taking / opening tickets via SMS / Text. I found out very early on that many users, especially the younger ones, like to communicate via text and allowing them to access full tech support via that service has really helped with customer satisfaction.

RICHARD TUBB

8TH NOVEMBER 2013 09:19:57

Brandon - thanks for the feedback and for sharing you're offering Tech Support via SMS. I can clearly see how that'd be attractive to some users - kudos to you for providing a channel using the communication method your clients want!

MICHAEL FREEMAN

7TH JULY 2014 04:41:40

Swinton still can't email documents and I didn't hang around to see if the renewal would be cheaper than the online quotes I'd already recevied. Any business thats serious about customer service need to communicate with their clients the way that suits them.

RICHARD TUBB

11TH JULY 2014 10:54:08

Michael - agreed. To send out sales messages via email but then refuse to help customers electronically is disingenuous.

RICHARD TUBB

28TH SEPTEMBER 2018 20:53:32

Thanks! We have indeed published guest posts before -- but not very often.

GARLAND

17TH DECEMBER 2018 15:56:00

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RICHARD TUBB

18TH DECEMBER 2018 10:45:35

Thanks for the kind feedback, Garland. Much appreciated!

SELINA WOOLDRIDGE

9TH APRIL 2019 08:24:21

I am actually glad to read this website posts which carries lots of useful facts, thanks for providing this kind of information.

RICHARD TUBB

10TH APRIL 2019 13:42:11

Thanks for the kind feedback, Selina!

JUDI SLOT

23RD AUGUST 2019 02:26:51

This post is really a good one it helps new the web users, who are wishing in favour of blogging.

RICHARD TUBB

23RD AUGUST 2019 08:51:27

Thank you, Judi! :-)

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