Back in 1936, Dale Carnegie wrote what is now a rather famous book, How to win friends and influence people. An accidental hit, it only came into being after a publishing firm executive at Simon & Schuster took one of Carnegie’s courses and felt that the content was ripe for publishing. Revised in 1981, it has now sold more than 30 million copies worldwide.

At the book’s heart is the theory that treating people well leads to personal and, by extension, commercial, success.

Customer service is so important

Despite a relative shortage of workers in many sectors, including the building trades, the world has woken up to the importance of good customer service. And with the web and social media, bad news can travel very quickly.

But Jo Causon, CEO of the Institute of Customer Service, refers to a 2021 institute Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) which surveyed 10,000 consumers, and says “that there are a number of things that organisations typically get wrong. We found that record numbers of customers experienced a problem with an organisation. At the same time, satisfaction with complaint handling is at its highest ever level. This suggests we have got better at dealing with issues when they happen, but worse at preventing them at source.” As far as she is concerned, getting things right first time is essential.

And she emphasises the point by looking at the impact of service on profitability. The institute wrote, in its Customer Service Dividend Report in 2017, that average EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation) was 24.7% for organisations with higher than sector average customer satisfaction for their sector versus 14.5% for those with lower than sector average customer satisfaction.

Good communication

Firms, do (or should) plan to the nth degree, but situations can come along and derail ordinarily good processes. COVID was one such example, and some have used it as a shield to hide deficiencies. In fact, Jo says that, according to the institute’s Index, almost a quarter of customers believed some organisations had abused COVID to their own benefit. 

She added: “Customers have been understanding up to a point, but many viewed COVID as an excuse for poor service, rather than a legitimate reason for delays, staff shortages, and the like.”

In Jo’s mind, “good, proactive communication is important, and so is treating staff and supplier partners well to drive greater engagement and commitment.”
Price is obviously an important part of the equation when choosing who to give business to – regardless, for our purposes here, of whether work is commercial or domestic. 

Even so, it’s clear that price is not the only determining factor. In fact, Jo highlights that, “the UKCSI demonstrates that a significant number of customers are prepared to pay more for better service.” 

The passage of time

Good customer service isn’t something that just happens; it takes time to become ingrained within a business. 

Jo thinks that those firms that illustrate best practice “really listen to their customers and aim to instil a positive culture of continuous improvement.” 

And she is a fan of comparative measurement and improvement, noting that “we work with members to benchmark their satisfaction levels against other organisations both within and outside their sector.” As she sees it, this helps them identify what they are doing well along with how they should invest in service to get the best return.

And it’s the small things that count, such as turning up when agreed, not making unrealistic promises, or keeping a customer up to date with issues that may slow a project down.

For those wanting to improve their offering, the institute can provide guidance. But, as Jo says, “it’s about taking expertise from people who have been through the same challenges you are facing, and that’s not just a theoretical exercise.”

But there is another element to the debate – fixing customer service in the culture of a business and its staff. And to do this, staff need to have a vested interest in the firm, and should provide what customers truly want. 

In Jo’s view, firms should set up processes with customers at the centre. She also advises detailing what good customer service means to the business, identifying key parts of the process, and where it can all go wrong.

This means not forgetting that employees are part of the process – they should be trained and their abilities developed accordingly. Not just on the technical skills required to do their job, but also to do the softer skills that will help them deal with challenging situations, understand the different needs of customers, and cope with pressure.

In his memoir, Pipe Dreams: Secret Diaries of a Neighbourhood Plumber, Nicholas James concludes that bad news always spreads quicker than good so he always goes the extra mile: “I always turn up when I say I’m going to and I’m always clear about how much something is going to cost.”

He notes how he once fixed a shower on Christmas Eve. The customer was so grateful, because her whole family were just about to arrive, that “she told everyone she knew that I was the best plumber in London. That led to tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of work… It turned out she came from a very large family and had a hell of a lot of friends.” 

In summary

Firms that last the distance tend to be those that offer the best possible service in tandem with price and quality. The question is, which firms will choose to ignore the advice and muddle through?