How ‘empowered’ are your people to give great customer service? How much do they ‘embrace’ that empowerment and actually do it? Here’s a great story about customer delight that illustrates how it can happen! And yet again, it comes from one of my favourites – First Direct.
I was with clients recently and we were discussing customer service. One of the them explained that she had left their office in Leeds to go to London for a couple of days, and having got there, discovered that she had lost her purse (or it had been stolen). Understandably, she quickly got on the phone to the various banks to cancel her cards and explained that it all went very well – details taken, courteous staff and cards cancelled – no problem.
She then called First Direct, and was asked ‘How are you feeling?’ which was a nice start, and then the card cancellation process got underway – very similar to all the other card providers. At the end of the process, the First Direct lady then asked ‘What are you going to do for money in the next couple of days if you have no purse or cards?’
‘I’m not really sure’ came the reply. ’Well, would you like for me to arrange £200 to be collected from a nearby HSBC bank? I’ve worked out where the nearest branch to your hotel is – If you tell me what you’ll be wearing, I’ll get them to look out for you and you can collect your money!’
I’m sure that there isn’t a rule book at First Direct that says ‘in the event of a client losing their card and being stuck in a hotel with no money, please follow this procedure…..’. First Direct has created a culture of ‘empowerment’ and it’s a great example of someone making it work to ‘delight’ customers! No wonder they are the UK’s ‘most recommended’ bank!
How ‘empowered’ are your people? What can you do to improve it in your business?
3 Responses to A First Class Tale About Customer Delight
True Focus
Replied on: January 25, 2011, 12:55 pm
Excellent demonstration of a key customer experience principle: EMPATHY. The First Direct customer service representative wasn’t thinking of the mechanical process of canceling cards, but of the difficulty of the customer who lost them. It speaks highly of the internal customer experience culture and training at First Direct that an employee would communicate along those lines.
Andy Hanselman
Replied on: January 25, 2011, 3:08 pm
Completely agree! What I love is that they are able to do it ‘consistently’ – that’s about ‘culture’ – ‘the way we do things around here’!
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Replied on: January 26, 2011, 2:32 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Andy Hanselman, The Customer's Shoes. The Customer's Shoes said: RT @andyhanselman: A first class tale about customer delight! http://bit.ly/g8I1Tn #customerexperience ::Empathy made the difference:: [...]