A ‘Top Gun’ will ensure their emails are informative, concise, confident and build rapport; engineers notes to each other will be thorough and reduce the chance of error or repeating themselves; take ownership of issues and get it sorted; take pride in their work; they are well presented and ensure a fun, clean and professional environment. There are many ways to write it, but I’m sure you get the picture.

Quality is too often over looked by business in favour of volume. People respect what you inspect. If a business doesn’t inspect quality then people won’t focus on delivering it. Many support centre metrics will focus merely on the number of calls abandoned or the length of time on calls. I care that our client communications are always top quality. Were our team professional, courteous, timely and accurate? Today I ask you to look at what you’ve produced and ask yourself is it really Top Gun? If you struggle to answer yes then I suggest the service industry is not your best fit.

How often do you spend time getting to know yourself? This seems a rather strange question, but we spend lots of time with friends and family and reflect on their decisions and personalities. In my mind I have a list of most trusted, funniest, unreliable friends as together we laugh, agree, fight, cry etc. Today I got to know myself better. Sat happily at my desk a call was forwarded to me from our reception. A client called for me because we had spoken months ago, despite them having one of our best account managers to call upon. The process and questions were outside of my usual pattern and I was frantically working through my daily goals. However, I stopped to take the call and have a friendly helpful conversation. Once the call had finished I had a beaming smile on my face and felt happy. I enjoyed helping this human and stepping outside of my comfort zone. Over the past few years I have begun to realise that I am a person who needs human interaction to be happy. That call didn’t help me achieve my goals for the day or did it?

How does this revelation relate to heading up the services for a thriving business? Simple. If I know myself better I am a better leader and get a better insight into knowing other people. A leader’s job is to lead and by example. I like listening to people and we are building a service team of like-minded people who also like to listen. Only by listening can we truly get to know our clients. Perhaps wisdom is knowing myself and thus other people better – that is how it feels to me. The simplest analogy I can use is caring for someone when they are ill. When I am unwell I always loved the tenderness of my parents and these days my wife as I’m tucked into bed and made some marmite soldiers. Knowing how much this means to me when my wife is ill I know she needs the same and often more caring.

In a slightly inflated nutshell, I shall step outside my comfort zone, reflect and continue to get to know myself and as a result know and serve others more effectively.

Edward, a friend of mine back from serving in Afghanistan took his Sony Reader into a Sony store in the past week as the screen was faulty. As the UKFast head of customer service this story was particular interest to me. The Sony Reader was a present and Ed did not know where it was purchased. The Sony store refused to help him. When he said Sony were the manufacturer they offered to ship it to Sony with a hefty cost for shipping and fixing it. He was told the Reader looked as though it had been bashed, but Ed stated it had been in his bedside table and it had not been damaged in anyway. Eventually he gave up arguing and decided to buy himself an Amazon Kindle. Even more damaging he vows he’ll never buy Sony again and told me the story! It’s amazing to hear how quickly a customer can lose their confidence in a brand. I sympathised with my friend, but reassured him that the majority of Sony staff and particularly leaders would be dismayed by his story. Sony are a great visionary company and they always look to offer great customer service. How easily they’ve failed a customer who for the past few months has dedicated his life to defending our freedom. I listened to Ed’s story and learnt three valuable lessons:

1) Respect the time of the customer. In this case fix the issue as swiftly as possible and offer to ship it for him at no cost.

2) Be wary of attributing blame to the customer without at least investigating first and respect their version of events.

3) Respect the customer or they very quickly lose respect for you.

My key message for the week is simply ‘respect’. A very powerful word and when I speak with clients this week, train our team and evaluate our processes I will remember Edward’s story.

I am in the process of reviewing our customer service escalation procedure. I have added an internal section called ‘Common Sense Service Rules’. Some may argue it’s a ‘get out of jail card’ for any inaccuracies in the process. I am a realist and a pragmatist. Procedures and processes suffer entropy and over time must evolve to remain useful. We need our team to think first and then follow the process. If the process doesn’t fit then they need a simple way to raise this and they need to see us take action to remedy it.

Twice this week I’ve spoken to companies as a customer and have provided feedback on their broken process. One credit company – who shall rename nameless and blocked my card – do not notify you when they’ve put an urgent secure message on your online portal. How can they possibly expect us to check their website daily in case they’ve sent me a message? I’ve seen the big company syndrome many times before and the common sense suggestions are rarely implemented. I am blessed to be working in a mid-sized energetic young company that is dynamic enough to make change happen.

I appeal to all professionals … think first and use your common sense.

Why am I telling you this, you might ask? We have a secure system albeit simple that relies on structure and discipline to get results. I see a similarity with information security.

Security is quickly becoming a buzz word in IT as companies look to capitalize on enhancing their software and services to make them more “secure”. Throughout my career I’ve known few people who have put security at the top of their list of concerns aside from banks. Let’s face it; security can be a tiresome subject. Security doesn’t provide a quick highly visible benefit like speed, availability or usability.

However, I see security like the brakes on a car. You can drive a super fast F1 car maintained by an awesome team, but if you’ve not paid attention to the brakes then when the unexpected happens – and it always will at some unpredictable moment; see the black swan theory – then it can literally kill you. A failed interface or slower speed can cause customer complaints, but failed security can get you sued and permanently damage your brand.

I love great service and any company that isn’t willing to take my data seriously is not offering me great service. On the surface all will be well, but great service is putting procedures in place to ensure the brakes on my super car never let me down. I will always forgive and forget people who scratch my car, but it may not be possible to forgive if all your data has been compromised.

At UKFast we are ISO 27001 certified. This gives me confidence that we have controls in place to manage information securely. We also offer and encourage our clients to use the ProProtection package. I’m not here to sell you the benefits of our offerings, but I would encourage you to see what security you have and discover how we could help ensure your brakes never let you down.

• You order a rare steak and the chef cooks it medium.
• The garage promises your car will be ready for 5pm when you drop it off, but then they phone to say it will be another day.

As Head of Customer Service I’m honest with our clients and never guarantee on issues.I prefer to explain what we are doing to minimize the chance of future issues and remind them that if issues arise we have solid processes and passionate people ready to resolve them.

To offer raving fan customer service, I feel companies must have the mission to continually improve it. I recall a great psychology lesson I was given many years ago that explained the concept of ‘diffusion of responsibility’. Quite simply, it is a social phenomenon found in larger groups when responsibility is not explicitly assigned. The outcome is that no action is actually taken. For example, in a busy high street no one may stop to help the blind or drunken person who has fallen over because surely somebody else will help. Diffusion of responsibility is a compelling reason for having small organised teams and excellent motivational leaders.

I want to hear how you would take responsibility of a situation and turn it around with a gesture of goodwill. Sadly I can’t meet everybody and so I have two VIP tickets to watch the Sale Sharks, which includes dinner and a signed rugby ball to give away. To come and share your service stories please provide the best reply to this challenge.

Without offering a monetary discount what goodwill gesture could you provide if you were a …

1)      Late cab/taxi driver.

2)      Dry cleaners that had previously delivered late.

I pride myself on how I manage my relationships, looking my best and having a tidy house and lovely garden. Why do some people care and why do some people not? At a young age I recall being scolded by my mother for littering and I’ve never done it again. I am dismayed by some people’s lack of respect as they abuse their environment.

In the past decade I can really see a difference in attitudes towards being green and specifically corporations. We are starting to do our part to make a difference. As such, I am genuinely very proud to be working for a carbon neutral company.

UKFast’s Carbon neutral status doesn’t come cheap, but it shows that our company cares and that matters to me. Did you realise a blog has a carbon footprint? I’m almost feeling guilty as I write this, but I did walk three miles this morning and my blog is hosted in our carbon neutral servers – phew!

Excellent customer service that can create ‘Raving Fans,’ requires many key ingredients. Caring is like the egg in a cake mixture. It binds everything together and is a requirement. Our carbon neutral status should demonstrate that we care and as a result I’m hopeful that it will attract like-minded caring individuals to join our team or to come and do business with us.

If you truly care then take action now and you will have the foundations to better serve your customers, family or the planet.

The Dark Knight of Customer Service

I ended the week dressed as Batman the Dark Knight, but my approach to championing service has been anything but stealthy. Friday was the day to thank all our service superstars at UKFast. Our team have produced their own book of favourite service stories and nominated each other for a series of service awards. We’ve started work on building our own customer service credo and visited local clients to say hello and find out what matters to them.

Customer service means ‘different strokes to different folks’ and to continually improve our service we need to listen and understand what is important to each client. Bruce Waynes (Batman) said: “Criminals aren’t complicated, Alfred. Just have to figure out what he’s after.” Dressed as Batman I say: “Customers aren’t complicated. You just have to figure out what they’re after.”

It was a pleasure to meet many of our clients this week without focusing on the usual support or sales topics. I’ve learned more about what really matters to our clients and can now start turning feedback into concrete actions. A customer friendly attitude and excellent honest communication are highly valued by our clients and it is great to hear such simple messages resonating with my own personal views. I would add that managing and exceeding people’s expectations is the other key element needed to create raving fans. To achieve raving fan service you need to have the right people and ensure they are empowered to deliver.

Krispy Kreme's and a Friendly Hello to Clients

I met some young students today in a sandwich shop who said that dedicating yourself to customer service was ‘sad’. I smiled and asked what they were studying and one girl replied ‘marketing’. I hope they grow to realise that customer service is not simply one department of scripted call centre workers. It is time we expanded our definition of service and started to reconsider who our customers are. Internal IT support, design teams, office cleaners and assistants are all customer service roles. We are moving mountains to ensure our team recognise this and let’s hope our future business leaders don’t lose sight of how vital excellent customer service is.

I’m excited to see the video summarising our National Customer Service Week and sharing it with our clients and friends. I hope you took the time last week to thank those people who really cared and delivered more than you expected. Occasionally things will go wrong and people will have a bad day and this is when the true service superstars shine.

This week has demonstrated that our team cares about great service and can have fun making it happen. I’m fired up and ready to continue our journey of delivering raving fan service ‘to infinity and beyond’.

For more fun photos of our Super Service day, click here.

Ross Keeping, Head of Customer Service

UKFast's Service Superstars