When customer service is your point of difference

At the River View Hotel in Brisbane on Friday, I received one of the best customer service experiences I can recall. What really excited me about the customer service experience is that it had nothing to do with personal service. No, this exceptional experience had to do with business standards and processes.

I was at the River View Hotel to present a session on How to Build a Stronger Newsagency as part of the Tower Systems Spring National Tour. I get to see many hotel functions rooms every year – the experience Friday was the best I can recall in a long time.

Beyond receiving what we had booked and paid for – the room, chairs and tables setup as we asked, a screen, power board, coffee, tea, cakes etc – they provided other items we had not requested, items which their back-office processes ensure are provided for each conference and meeting booked at the hotel.

Outside of the usual extras we see provided for meeting rooms such as pads, pens, mints and water for attendees, a white board and one or two markers (which often don’t work), they provided a fully stocked stationery kit with a full set of working whiteboard markers, whiteboard eraser, tape, scissors, a spare power cord, stapler, pens pencils and a host of other items which could be useful during a conference. They also provided fire evacuation information on the presenters table – this is usually hidden on a wall – as well as a clean rubbish bin.  They also had a clearly market central place where messages are left – so as to not interrupt any session.

For these Tower Sessions we get to a range of venues from five star capital city hotels to country pubs.  These extra items, no matter how small they may seem, demonstrate a level of thoughtfulness I rarely see in conference rooms.  While you can often ask for them it was that they were there waiting for us as part of their process which impressed me.

On the flight on the way home I was thinking about this, the back-end processes in business, which ensure an exceptional customer experience.  It is what fast food companies like McDonalds brought to Australia – back-end processes which improved the overall service.

My sense is that Australian newsagents can improve back-end processes to improve the customer service experience.  I know that we can in the businesses I own.  Here are some ideas I think we could implement at the back-end to improve the customer experience:

• Be more consistent with our opening and closing processes to ensure that all customer contact points (lottery counter, shopping bags etc) are perfectly stocked.
• Ensure we have a genuine value special offer in every bag every time.
• Regularly walk the shop with the view to test for customer access and ensure it is clear all the way.
• Have a regular free gift program where customers are rewarded unexpectedly say once a month on different days.
• Ensure all staff have a name badge on EVERY TIME.
• At the busiest times of the day employ a greeter to thank customers for shopping with you.
• Pro-actively do the things you do for customers only when asked – acting without them having to ask is the kind of service people remember.

A good example of a change is either ensuring you have a credit card machine at every register or a wireless credit card machine so that customers don’t have to move from one point to another to enter a PIN number.

This is all about delivering an experience your customers enjoy and which is unexpected, an experience you can systemise in a way to ensure consistency and ease of delivery.  If you can do this you will, have customers spreading good word of mouth as I am about the River View Hotel in Brisbane.

When customer service is your point of difference it where you need to make the biggest investment.