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Customer Service. Are we seeing a sea-change?

You don’t spend long talking to older people (and some of us here at CBA have been around for a while) without hearing negative remarks about the quality of service in Britain today. You’re a customer, the argument goes, but “they” don’t know who you are, what you want or how they’re failing you and they don’t care that they don’t know.

Are the grumbles justified? Yes, I think they often are. Cost-cutting has led companies to outsource aspects of customer service so important in keeping the customer satisfied that they should really consider them part of their core business. That isn’t to say there was a golden age of customer service in Britain from which we have derogated. As a nation, we’ve never been very good at seeing the customer as what s/he really is – the most important person in our business, the one who pays the bills, the woman or man who needs more than anyone else we have to do with to be wooed and satisfied.

It matters more now than it did, though, because customers have more options than they used to have. The cost of entry to many industries has fallen to the point where alternative suppliers can come in and take your customers, while the disappearance of cross-border difficulties mean that companies focused on service are moving in on our poor performers. People are more attuned now to what they are missing, and the British are far less inclined than they used to be to accept poor service. And they’re not fooled – they know that, by and large, people who spent the 90s talking about “delighting your customer” didn’t actually delight anyone.

Good service is customer-oriented. It’s personal. Even in huge B2B contracts between leviathans, service is still given by people to people. If you don’t have in place people who want to deliver quality service, and if you don’t give them the tools to do it, it won’t happen. And you’ll lose your customers to companies who care about them more than you do.

So to my question. Are we seeing a sea-change? I think we may be. Recent invitations to recruit salespeople have not focused only on finding women and men capable of building the client’s business – though that, of course, remains essential. What is new and encouraging is that those women and men have to be focused on helping the company deliver the best customer experience. They have to be customer-centric. They have to want to: make this the brand that customers really want; and win the best customers and make them proud to stay.

Usually when someone asks for salespeople, the request comes either from HR or from Sales. Recently it has increasingly come from both, jointly. Companies are recognising that what they want to achieve involves a profound commitment to a customer service culture and that that only comes when the line function and HR work together.

What does it mean for us as a recruiter? The same thing. We have to deliver salespeople who understand what new business sales and account management are about. But they also need the personality profile that says they want to deliver the highest quality of customer service. And we have the people to ensure that. Our salesperson recruitment process is driven by our two directors – John Lynch, who has 25 years in IT sales as Salesman, Sales Manager and Sales Director and Kevin Jowett, an HR Director of considerable experience. Between them, they have unparalleled expertise in matching the selling capability with the behavioural characteristics that will enable you to grow your business the way you want to grow it.

Give us a try. We’re worth it – and so are you.