I always remember my first day at work. I started at a high street bank and was told to sit with a senior cashier who had been tasked with doing some initial training with me. It was busy at the counter with a line of faces in front of us. It quickly became apparent that my new colleague had an excellent rapport with all of the customers. She called everyone by name and invariably had a laugh and a joke with each customer about some passing issue. She dealt with everyone efficiently and politely before moving to the next customer.
It got to mid-morning and I was asked to go and see the manager of the branch. The manager welcomed me and took me through a number of things before making a comment about the colour of my shirt. My shirt was dark blue. 'Men wear white shirts in my branch. How can you ever hope to provide good customer service if you don't give the right image of the bank?' he asked. He then went on to explain the importance of customer service; how it was key to call the customer by their name and ensure that their transactions were dealt with as efficiently as possible.
How times have changed. In those long gone days, the majority banking transactions were dealt with in the local branch. Customers paid their salary in at the branch counter and did a manual transfer to their savings accounts. They took money out from the cashier and did all of their other banking transactions face-to-face.
I was just thinking a few days ago that it is almost two-years since I have been in any branch of my bank. I now check my account balances and do inter-account transfers online. In fact, the majority of my transactions take place online and I draw cash out of the machine outside my local supermarket. The fact is that I would feel worse about my bank if their website wasn't working than if they stopped their cashiers from using customer's names.
This is the trend in today's economy and it is impacting the way that customer service is delivered in a major way. More and more transactions are taking place online as customers find self-service more convenient and often better value. In a typical week, for example, I will order train tickets online and collect them at the machine in the station. I will do food shopping online and as well as all my banking. I will possibly buy books online or some tickets for a football game.
That's not to say that a friendly face, the use of my name and getting an effective service when I meet company employees are not important. However, the critical trend in today's economy is that more and more customers are doing business in the comfort of their own home. They want to see well designed and easy to use web services and effective order fulfillment processes in the background. If these are not in place, then the customer will have a diminished view of the service the company provides.
I was looking at some figures recently showing the size of online banking and shopping. The growth of these services continues at an amazing pace. One can be sure that the next generation will be even more computer literate and even more willing to do transactions online. The companies with poor online offerings, difficult to use websites or weak processes to deliver goods ordered will surely be the ones that are deemed to have poor customer service.