Giving Great Customer Service is Rewarding in so Many Ways!

Hello Reader! Right from my first job as a babysitter as a 16 year old where I prided myself on turning up on time, listening to the needs of the parents, ensuring the 'baby's' had what they needed and getting them to bed on time to giving the parents a warm and reassuring welcome back to working at Harrods, then in fundraising roles and latterly school / college marketing and admissions roles, I have enjoyed helping people and making people feel happy. 

For me it is the most natural activity in the world and I love the fun of any challenging journeys and smoothing them out because it does feel good when someone goes away happy. 

There have been so many occasions in my career when this has happened: the babysitting role, to looking after customers at Harrods and giving them a personal experience - even one an actual personal shop (although I was not a personal shopper) organising dress, handbag, tights, shoes and a shawl for a surprise visit to the opera by her partner, to looking after donors and spending 1000s of hours chatting with all kinds of people and listening to their needs and how they wanted to support the organisation I was working for at the time to now, looking after parents and learners. 

One family at one of the schools I was working for wanted to switch schools but were concerned at the double fees and we worked something out to ensure a win- win situation. Within weeks their boys were shining at school and the parents were so happy. 

Another school could not accommodate a boy from abroad at the last minute for various reasons and the agent rang to see if the school I worked for could. Within 24 hours the family had travelled to us and the student was happily ensconced in his new educational home and family within a matter of days. 

One of my schools I managed to work with a well known TV series to come in and film. We worked closely with them and gave them everyone they needed and red carpet customer service on the day they came to see if it would work. They especially likes the car parking sign and home made cakes and biscuits and then returned to film!

Former colleagues thought spending a good few hours on a visit  / sale was a waste of time. I never felt this at all. I always thought time spent with a customer was the best use of time and my sales record showed this. 

Last week, for National Careers week, I was delivering customer service training to learners and just listening to their responses and discussion about specific areas in customer service was amazing. They are my customers too! I do believe kids just want our attention and time - the most precious of gifts. One learner thanked me at the end and said it was so helpful as she had just started a new job and said she would be using what she learned in my session in her job. That was definitely a Wow moment for me and when I get this response makes me realise why I love my job so much.

And it really is the little things that matter in customer experience too and these don't cost anything including greeting a customer (both internal and external - and I recently tasked my team with this as part of our work in leading on celebrity customer service), using please and thank you and goodbye too. These are such underused words and are so effective too.

These stories above are just a small number of examples of customer experience I have effected, although I have never seen them as part of the job - they have always seemed very natural activities and not part of my job, but something that seemed the right thing to do at that time. I do hope that learner will feel the same!

I love it more than anything (well AGAs and my family in joint place!). 

What I am trying to say is, that if you are in the business of customer experience you should love it and want to help and feel it the most natural thing on the planet - like breathing actually. 

I did some staff customer service training recently and I love doing this - I will be doing it this week as part of an induction for new members of staff. I especially love these sessions and the difficult questions colleagues ask and there are always these. Its not natural for everyone and you have to be passionate to convince them. I love seeing them consider the answers in the context of their own requirements and then realise that if you want great service, why on earth would you not give it.

If I can spread the word on the importance of customer service to colleagues, learners - anyone who will listen (and read in fact!) - with the knowledge that anyone can grow their organisation through a focus on customer experience (the new marketing battleground) because I have seen it happen three times now, then my work is done!