Director at srcg Scott Annan suggests that retailers will see more success if they focus on good old customer service values
Great customer service and value is alive and well! This weekend I had four excellent experiences in a restaurant, with a retailer and with tradesmen.
This may have something to do with a decision not to buy a newspaper or listen to economic updates on the radio or TV.
It has become easy to believe that our economy is down 90% and we are all doomed rather than 10%, and that it is down to ‘global forces’ over which we have little influence.
Well this weekend I decided to apply the wise adage of changing the way we look at things and the way things look will change. I stopped believing the propaganda.
On Friday evening we joined friends at Sagar, a South Indian vegetarian restaurant in West London. It was packed, the copious food and drink were authentic and excellent, and the service was impeccable.
The bill for seven was £108 which helps to explain the queue for tables all evening. The owner drives a new Porsche but was driving a white van on Friday night as he was transferring supplies to his new and fourth restaurant in Covent Garden.
He has not printed BOGOF vouchers or reduced prices. A good restaurant has become a great restaurant by delivering what we the customers want.
Is there a learning here for the super chefs Antony Worrall Thompson and Tom Aiken whose restaurants have gone into administration?
I bought a coat in Cancer Research on Saturday but I wasn’t sure if it was right; my wife and daughter tell me I have clothes blindness!
The manageress read my mind, smiled and told me to bring it back if it did not meet with approval. It met with approval and I was handed two large bags of laundered clothes to take to any charity shop.
I took them to Cancer Research wearing my new coat and the manageress beamed at me. We bumped into each other in Caffè Nero on Sunday and she mentioned record takings on Saturday. Brilliant.
I signed up to the on-line tradesman service Rated People last week to find a roofer. Three responded within the hour and they came round to the house on Saturday.
The highest quote was four times the price of the lowest and most detailed quote. The roofer whom I contracted spent almost an hour explaining the problem and showing me what he planned to do.
His quote came with a list of local people who had used him and an invitation to call any of them. Brilliant.
The two that I rejected spent ten minutes, did not involve me at all and were twice and four-times as expensive.
My second experience was the builders contracted to renovate our ground floor. On Sunday evening they arrived with the most tools and dust sheets I have ever seen, exactly on time.
Their one page contract detailed exactly what we wanted, when we wanted it at the agreed price.
It’s amazing what a positive attitude and a bit of positive thinking can do and so I am going to take a leaf out of John F. Kennedy’s book and stop asking ‘what my customers can do for my business,’ and instead focus on ‘what I can do for them!’
