In our latest episode, we examine new research into the level of customer satisfaction in the UK, where the landscape has shifted dramatically in recent years. We start by discussing the reasons behind the decline in customer’s experiences, from the pandemic's shake-up of our shopping habits, to Brexit and the economic and political whirlwinds influencing staffing.
As we navigate the transformation of customer service, we acknowledge the impact of digital communication, which has both streamlined and complicated customer interactions. In a candid conversation, we highlight the fresh challenges confronting a new breed of contact centre employee, less tethered to traditional phone-based support. Brexit's ripple effects on staffing and the dissonance between consumer expectations and business realities allow us to delve into the tough questions facing the service industry today.
To cap off, we share personal tales that bring home the significance of stellar customer service in the sales journey. We debate the nuances of the UK's tipping culture and its influence on team cohesion and fairness, alongside technology's role in reshaping these interactions. Considering the varied expectations across service sectors, we prompt a broader dialogue on societal norms and dependency on tips for income.
Join us for an episode that doesn't just talk about customer service—but elevates it to an art form, but one we know something about – the art of selling - crucial to the success of any thriving business.
For more info, free resources, useful content, & our blog posts, please visit realitytraining.com.
Reality Training - Selling Certainty
In our latest episode, we examine new research into the level of customer satisfaction in the UK, where the landscape has shifted dramatically in recent years. We start by discussing the reasons behind the decline in customer’s experiences, from the pandemic's shake-up of our shopping habits, to Brexit and the economic and political whirlwinds influencing staffing.
As we navigate the transformation of customer service, we acknowledge the impact of digital communication, which has both streamlined and complicated customer interactions. In a candid conversation, we highlight the fresh challenges confronting a new breed of contact centre employee, less tethered to traditional phone-based support. Brexit's ripple effects on staffing and the dissonance between consumer expectations and business realities allow us to delve into the tough questions facing the service industry today.
To cap off, we share personal tales that bring home the significance of stellar customer service in the sales journey. We debate the nuances of the UK's tipping culture and its influence on team cohesion and fairness, alongside technology's role in reshaping these interactions. Considering the varied expectations across service sectors, we prompt a broader dialogue on societal norms and dependency on tips for income.
Join us for an episode that doesn't just talk about customer service—but elevates it to an art form, but one we know something about – the art of selling - crucial to the success of any thriving business.
For more info, free resources, useful content, & our blog posts, please visit realitytraining.com.
Reality Training - Selling Certainty
Hi Bobby, we've got a juicy one today, but before we start, how are you diddling?
Speaker 2:I'm diddling well. It's suddenly become a lovely day here in Lewis, where it's been very, very wet of late, and it's a beautiful day. What's it like in the the pill box that you're currently in?
Speaker 1:Yeah, in the clay dons. Well, there is water on the clay. It is boggy, but it's not boggy. It's just like doing GCSE pottery and being unable to make anything because you can't get the consistency of the clay right. You look out the window all around here and you've got water sitting on a load of unmade pots. Is that a lovely image? Oh?
Speaker 2:it's a beautiful image, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if anybody One that we can all relate to, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all of us can relate to the GCSE pottery. Yeah, in fact, I don't think it would be just a single exam. It would be art, of which pottery would be a small element.
Speaker 1:Well, no, you're absolutely right, You're absolutely right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there is no actual exam for pottery unless you become an artist later. I call it. Yeah, my mother has a potting shed at the end of her garden with all the bits in?
Speaker 1:Did she make it?
Speaker 2:Not for years, but I mean she's got a wheel and a kiln and all the other bits and pieces.
Speaker 1:Has she.
Speaker 2:She was a very prolific potter back in her youth.
Speaker 1:If she wants to get rid of that, I might take it off her actually.
Speaker 2:What Into what? The whole lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:What are you going to become? A potter?
Speaker 1:Well, we've been talking about it.
Speaker 2:Where are you going to set that up? Not in your new shed.
Speaker 1:No, it can go where Matty Boy's leaving over, that way, you know. Ah, the stables yeah you can go in there. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a good idea, and the idea of having Blake pottery would be fantastic.
Speaker 1:You're telling me I could have a kiln in there.
Speaker 2:You could my gosh. You could.
Speaker 1:And then all these sort of quite little private potters might emerge and go. We had no idea that a bloke in the village had a kiln, and they don't have to drive to larger towns to get their stuff fired, and I've become a cottage industry.
Speaker 2:I mean, the kiln is not massive.
Speaker 1:No, of course.
Speaker 2:What you do as a beginner is you'd make lots of mugs okay, because they're relatively simple. So you make a load of mugs with a handle, put them on far the lot, so you might do 10 at a time. You can flog them for three quid a pop at jumble sails and you know you'd be absolutely fine. You'd have quite a lot of mugs to have a living, but you know you would enjoy it. So anyway, we move on from advanced pottery studies to why aren't we being served? This is a podcast all about customer service in the United Kingdom.
Speaker 2:Bob and Jeremy's Conflab the reality podcast. This is a podcast all about customer service in the United Kingdom and it's been inspired by a couple of things. First of all, Anne, who is our friend and colleague, sent us this really interesting article from the Daily Telegraph, which has a lot of stats in about how customer satisfaction has plummeted in recent years for various reasons, and we're going to talk a little bit about that because that's a lot of our work. And also we're going to think more broadly about customer service across the UK and how we as consumers access it and how it is delivered to us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we'll also add in a few things that I think people could be doing to improve the delivery of their service. But I also want to sort of remind listeners that we have a role as well. And well, let's face it, consumers have become rather more demanding.
Speaker 2:we could say have they or have they actually been less engaged and would rather not engage with people at all?
Speaker 1:Well, I think what I think? We'll go straight into it. I think what happens is when the pandemic hit we lived in an online world where we would order things and we'd have trucks and vans delivering everything and we didn't go into retail. And then we had to reengage with humans again.
Speaker 2:And we're going, oh so much, so much.
Speaker 1:this is dreadful compared to a bloke turning up with a box, and I understand that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely the skill level.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's a lot of reasons, but let's kick off with the facts from the ICS, who are the Institute of Customer Service. It's at its lowest level since 2015. But I think what's the second part of the stat is it's falling at its fastest pace since they've ever bothered to record satisfaction. So they record it through a variety of metrics customer complaints, good service which get involved. At the back of this there are various quantities of complaints taken in because companies have to declare some of this stuff, especially large utility companies and all sorts of people. They gather this data and because they're paying for benchmarking, they get back and see where they feature in rankings and stuff, and this is all available for people to listen to. That's the first thing. If you want to check stuff out, you can go to the Institute of Customer Service. But why is it happening? So if we go, I think we look at the perfect storm of things that are happening. So things cost more. Costs are going up.
Speaker 1:You and I have talked a bit about Brexit. We can talk about it here. We could say that there's less customer service-y type staff around accessing them, certainly in certain industries like hospitality, when we come to high tourism periods or summer holidays. Customer service people are slightly harder to find. We know that various people complain I can't get the staff and you're headhunting them from someone else where they can't be backfilled. So we could say some of it's socio-political, some of it is cost and we all just demand more.
Speaker 2:I would say what we have had is a shift in behaviour, and that has been sped up by the pandemic, and what that means is that, whereas, let's say, 10 years ago, we were more inclined without much reference to the internet or anything else, to go oh, I don't like this bill from this organization.
Speaker 2:I'm going to ring them up with the number on the letter and have a conversation with them. We now have so much interaction with the internet in advance that what that is doing is driving the requirement for customer service and, as you've said, the numbers of people delivering customer service is dropping, and the quality of those individuals and their ability to deal with things is also dropping. And this means that you, as you've said, it is a perfect storm, because if I can't get my issue dealt with, or if I can't buy the product I want, or if I can't change something which is incorrect, then I'm going to have to call again, and that's going to make me even more angry, which means my satisfaction is going to plummet, and what we have is a constantly increasing level of demand against a constantly decreasing level of quality.
Speaker 1:There's something else you've said there that connects to channel. In that article in the telegraph and I can't find it to hand there is a stat that the companies that have the least amount of channels do rather better than people who say contact us by Twitter, contact us by WhatsApp, contact us by. I think the multitude of channels makes things harder again, because how many are you going to man effectively? And also what you might do is have a customer who sends an email and then they go. Oh, I'm going to stick it on this as well, so you might just be getting in multiple complaints.
Speaker 2:I don't think it's just complaints, and I think we need to sort of broaden this slightly because let's think about the quality of the individuals. So you and I work a lot in contact centres, call centres and lots of those individuals are very good and have been doing it for many years and have rolled with the changes of their various industries. I would say that coming into contact centres right now is a generation of people who have either finished school or finished university who are coming in to have conversations with people on the telephone, where previously they have had actually very few conversations with anybody on the telephone. They're so used to doing things digitally on their phones, on web chat or anything else, that it is that they're using via their telephones to actually have a conversation is a challenge.
Speaker 1:So I was talking to a team leader the other day and they said to a member of their team about outgoing calls what about? Just this person was a bit ill. They said have you contacted the doctor? He said you know what did he say? And the guy went say he didn't say anything. He replied by email, because I only ever contact my doctor in that way. And so what other outgoing calls do you make? And just had a discussion. This person, who was 22, had never made an outgoing call to an organisation. He never, ever, emailed, whatsapp, texted, tweeted, and yet he was in an outgoing call job.
Speaker 1:Yeah it's be ringing people back who'd received some information to see if they wanted to go to the next stage. He never made an outgoing call personally. So, just as you're saying, there's a generation of people who just don't have telephone skills, and yet we've got thousands, if not millions, of people who want to use the phone as the channel of communication. There's a complete disconnect there.
Speaker 2:That is a staffing generational challenge right there there is, and I think if we think about general life, energy utilities, telecoms, general things that you need to do to run your life council tax. Even you pick up the phone and speak to someone and the waits alone can be colossal. I tried to call HMRC the other day and before anybody could pick up my call I was hot on hold for at least 20 minutes. I'd actually done everything I needed to do on their website. I just went onto their website, found my way through, managed to get a password re-sent to me, reconnected with the website, went in, found the thing I wanted to do, did it, had it confirmed before anybody had picked up the phone.
Speaker 1:Did you then need to continue or you hung up?
Speaker 2:No, I hung up. So you know, had somebody picked up the phone in a timely fashion, I could have done it then, but it was just taking so long. I had nothing else to do, so I went onto the website and did it myself.
Speaker 1:Interesting. You're creating a phantom traffic jam of people and then you're just hanging up. So how many other people are also ringing, not being able to be served and actually then self repair half their problem, you know?
Speaker 2:It's interesting, isn't it? So that's one example, but I think the other side of it is service in general. Going back to something you mentioned, let's talk about the B word. So Brexit has definitely meant that thousands of people who worked in hospitality and other customers facing roles over the last 10 years or so have left the country, and at the moment there is a massive number of vacancies for those roles. And there's a new chain bakery I won't say the name opening in Lewis at the moment, and you know they're trying to find staff.
Speaker 1:Really Just to work it out.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and so we need people to earn 10, 11, 12 pounds an hour serving stuff to us. And, of course, the organizations themselves want those people to be good, hardworking, efficient, swift, good at selling cakes and all the other bits and pieces that go alongside it. They want that well rounded, customer facing individual, and they're struggling to find them because we have a society where those jobs for many years have been done by people from other countries in the main, or, let's say, 50% of them.
Speaker 2:So I think that's a big issue at the moment, that we can't find people to do these jobs. Secondly, I think if we look at our experience of working in contact centers and retail, yeah, there you have a real mix of ability. And so because, a bit like the internet, I can go on to Amazon and select the products I want without any engagement or help from anybody. There's also a feeling in retail that you can wander into a store, select the thing you want. I don't actually need to speak to anybody. And so why don't we employ people at the lowest possible rate, just to take the money which is in effect and stack shelves? You know, that's it.
Speaker 1:There's two clients that we didn't get the work with, three actually one who's gone, bust Mm-hmm, and that was a fashion brand, and they told us explicitly we don't do any customer service or sales train, we just train people in the fashion. Yeah, they've gone and they were huge. There's another one we didn't get, who ranked very low, who are just about products, and so they're more interested in stacking shelves and having product availability yeah. And the third one is a fashion brand that is dropped hugely off the radar, where we spend a lot of time talking to them. We designed a pilot program and, just as you're saying, their service levels are just it's here, it's over there. What size? There's no discussion, no investigation of why you might be wearing this, and also their conversion rate is only ever one item. Yeah, I need socks with it, I need a tie, I need a jacket. They don't do anything. I mean we, they let us in there for a year or two. We could absolutely transform the place, so could other training companies.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, so let's talk about that. There's still a pilot high, sell it high kind of mentality across many in the retail sector. It's interesting that the top of the list, the highest ranked Organization, gets classified as retail. But, you don't actually go in a shop and we can name them. That's a card. Oh, they are ranking number one for customer satisfaction and they're down as a retailer and food, but it's mostly somebody Coming to your home with a nice smiley face bringing in some boxes and let's be honest, jeremy, come on a card.
Speaker 2:Oh is middle class. So you know, there we are, and you would expect it to be pretty good, pretty More.
Speaker 1:I don't know, maybe, maybe, but then number two in customer satisfaction is just phone based and that's first direct. I know you've been with them for years. Absolutely, they are they are second place, and then third, which is a complete retailer Experience, is John Lewis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it's not. Actually it's not complete retailer.
Speaker 1:They probably do 50% online.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you can look at those and go okay, those are your high rated Organizations for customer satisfaction. It's a slightly different thing. I know that when people like which do customer service Tests, the top three are always Apple, john Lewis and people like lush.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're very customer focused, very hands-on, quite literally. But I think that that doesn't actually tell the whole story. Okay, because some of that is Reputational. Why are John Lewis always in the top three? Because they always have been, yeah, so when you go customers, there's oh, that's John Lewis. That's just a reputation. We know that John Lewis have had huge issues in the last few years and, you know, maintaining the idea of a department store when we've all got a department store on our phone.
Speaker 1:I think you get a bit of confirmation bias on this, that somebody, yes, has an okay experience across one or two and they go Well, that's okay, let's keep them up there because this is checked and tested. But if they actually were to be more diverse and they're checking they might find a higher variance In service.
Speaker 2:This podcast comes from reality training Creators of the five principles which so many brands now use as the basis of their sales models. This gives them consistency and certainty. Find out more about how we can help you at reality training dot com. But let's take a look at the five principles that we use to help you.
Speaker 1:But let's just talk for a moment about what is customer service, because One of our challenges that we keep having. I saw a chap on LinkedIn today. He put out a message saying entrepreneurs need to stop talking about calling themselves entrepreneurs when they start a business, need to call themselves sales people. I like that Because that's what they got to do. They've got to convince people and sell.
Speaker 1:We constantly battle when we go into organizations where ostensibly were either involved in retention, so they're keeping customers who are thinking of counseling or downgrading or so on. Oh, we're dealing with people ringing to buy something. They call them customer service teams. I mean, there's some weird names of teams are working with now you know, and I think got the word custom service in there but you and I, we bang the drum. We say no, no, you're selling, you're selling your organization, you're selling your efficiency, you're selling your ability to listen, you're selling your ability to provide a solution. The whole thing is sales. Why can't we get a switch to that? What is it, bob? And if we think about a few clients now, what is it about this problem of sales? Why is that perpetuating? Even more, because if we look at these stats now it's plummeting, yeah, didn't they? Maybe listen to us a bit more and realize it's a sales job.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe they should. I think they definitely don't advertise them as sales jobs. So you go in and you're told it's a. You're going to be doing a job which is along the lines of a consultant. Well, you know what consultants sell things too. They just do it in slightly different way, but they're still selling something. But ultimately you are there to sell things. If what you do results in a transaction, then you're a salesperson.
Speaker 2:First direct are no different. If I ring up first direct and say I need a loan, somebody is going to sell me that loan. Their job is to sell that loan, to make money on it. So that's a sales job. They might say I'm a loan advisor, but if you're advising me and it results in a loan which you make interest on, then you've sold it to me. It's just, it's a semantics at the end. I think there is still a Cross section of society that views sales with suspicion, and I also think there's a lot of people who are in education or going through university who are thinking the last thing I want to do is to become a sales person. And yet that is where the vast majority of jobs are sitting.
Speaker 1:They're just not called that, not just the vast majority. According to the ICS again, the Institute of Customer Service 60% of all employees in the UK work in customer facing serving roles there we are, and that's 80% of our GDP coming from the services sector. Amazing. So that's over half of us are doing something service related and yet our services CAC and dwindling yeah. So what, what have? Well, let's talk about some of the things that we believe people should do about it, at different levels, I suppose.
Speaker 2:Mm, hmm. I mean, I think you could have five podcasts on this subject. Well, let's talk about individual.
Speaker 1:So you've just talked about university leavers, young people going into it. Let's talk about what they could personally do If no one does anything for them what could they decide to do, and you'll get an answer from me that you'll enjoy. But what do you think somebody personally could decide?
Speaker 2:I think there's two things, because the secondary decision relies on them doing the first.
Speaker 1:OK.
Speaker 2:And the first thing is to actually put yourself in a position to receive great service and sales behaviors. Then you appreciate them, then you think how they can work for you. If you've never received it, if you've never sat in a half decent restaurant, if you've never been to a good curry house and have been served fantastically, then the concept of it is beyond you. Yeah, and I think that's the first thing you need to actually understand that it has value. Yeah, before you then go and train yourself in it, what's yours?
Speaker 1:Mine is if you don't think you want to be doing this, but you've ended up in it, the best thing you can do for your longer term prospects is to become brilliant at it, even if that's only for six months that you absolutely understand customers, you dig into why they're asking this. What can I do? What am I completely in control of? And then, when you understand a customer, you're working for an organization that either makes a product or a service that they want these customers to take and keep on taking. You can then quite easily, having been high up and high achieving, switch to marketing, go off into product development and actually use that as a springboard to go into other departments.
Speaker 1:I remember a guy in my team back at Yellow Pages who told us clearly he didn't enjoy it and was only interested in marketing and he wanted to get right behind marketing Yellow Pages. So he just became brilliant and then he got a meeting with marketing and he left us and that's where he wanted to be. But he realized he was never going to get the job if he was desperately average. They go well, you're not doing very well where you are. Why would you move? So my personal thing for the individual is to become brilliant at it for as short a period as possible to make a springboard out, because if you don't like it, stop doing it.
Speaker 2:Well, I think the other side of it is that if you accept that what you're doing is a sales job especially if there's an incentive like a bonus or commission or on target earnings or uncapped commission pots available then rather than say, well, I need to do the minimum I can to take over, think about how you can really make it work for you, because the idea of earning good commission means that work becomes a real pleasure and actually it could change your life. If your mindset is, I can see how this will work for me. So, yeah, it's down to the individual.
Speaker 1:Organizations. One of the things stated in the report I read was the huge lack of training. Huge lack of training and investment.
Speaker 2:Now.
Speaker 1:I think there's some people who still believe that it's the sheer volume of calls that we're struggling with, it's the waiting times, it's the turn. They'll blame anything other than the skill set of the individuals answering the calls. Their leadership is weak. Their team leadership is poor. Fast promotion to leadership positions with no real understanding of how to run a sales meeting, how to delegate, how to infuse, how to motivate, how to reward, how to praise, how to coach. The list goes on. First of all, train your leaders before you even touch the people doing the calls, because if your leaders are desperately averaged, all of that learned behavior and the first line management experience is going to be poor. So for scale and cost efficiency, get your leaders to be considerably better than they are.
Speaker 2:Shall we do. Three is the Magic Number.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's go to. Three is the Magic Number. Cue the music.
Speaker 2:OK, so what's your first one?
Speaker 1:I would love to know what is the single best customer experience service that you've received that you can recall right now.
Speaker 2:So that was my number two question to you, so we'll come to you in a sec. So the best I can recall right now was in New York City a few years ago. We went to a restaurant there and this was a very, very good restaurant that we've been recommended to go to, and the service we got in that restaurant was absolutely stellar. It was absolutely amazing really knowledgeable, wonderful, warm people welcoming you into this place and giving you the most wonderful experience. It was truly magnificent.
Speaker 2:And remember this is in the United States of America, where everyone lives on tips. Everyone is expected to allocate a good chunk of cash for the, for the bill, and when the bill came at the end, it said on the receipt this is not a tipping restaurant. We do not ask for gratuitous. Our service is included. Now, that was extraordinary to be in America, where everyone tips, and yet there was no expectation of it. They had all decided to give every single customer the best evening out they'd ever had, and we did, and it was amazing and we loved it and we came out glowing from that place and I think that is the size of the prize. If you can please your customers that well then they'll always talk about it. They'll always come back, you'll always have a business, you'll always have a job, and I think that, for me, was the best. What about yours?
Speaker 1:Well, the most consistently good is more important than the single most, and it's the Buckingham Fort. We were there two nights ago. You and I can go there. We took Anne and the rain. David and his team, our wonderful, kind, efficient, knowledgeable. The food's delicious. We have some humor. He gave you a brand. He gave you two flipping brandies.
Speaker 2:Yes, I forgot that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so kind, but they just know my kids go there on their own. Now he's got the next generation of blakes coming through. It's just consistently supreme.
Speaker 2:Okay, so my first question to you was what's the worst customer service experience you can recall?
Speaker 1:Wow, that might be harder. No, it isn't.
Speaker 1:It's buying a suit with my son and shopping Milton Keynes and it was an early indication of disloyal bonding. When my son was going in for the sixth form and we were looking at these things, we found a suit we quite liked and I went well, look, we should just look at a few other shops. And he said, no, no, I really like this. And the guy said to me if you come back on Monday, that suit will be 25% cheaper. What he didn't understand is my son needed to be wearing it on the Tuesday of that week. I wasn't gonna wait six, seven days to get a suit. I'd already told him that is that he's going to school in the next few days. Just ridiculous, pointless, annoying. And that whole concept of our book, of course, disloyal bonding slagging off, his organization telling me something surreptitious, hoping that I'll like him and buy a world. The opposite effect was true.
Speaker 2:Great, and what's your second question?
Speaker 1:My second, one thing is if there's one thing people listening to this episode could either take away in a position of leadership or they're running a team, they're running their own business what should they do just to improve their own customer service?
Speaker 2:I think, as you've just discussed, they need to accept that they're running a sales organization and revitalize what they do and be proud of that loud and proud. We're here to sell stuff. This is how we're gonna do it, because I think if you do that and people jump on board, you will achieve so much better results than just pretending that you're just serving people Good got one for me.
Speaker 2:Yes. Now my third one is a bigger discussion, but I think it's a big thing. So I just talked about this restaurant in New York where they didn't receive tips. What is your opinion on the culture of tipping in the United Kingdom?
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, this is big. As an ex-waiter who wasn't paid before the minimum wage was invented, I had to not only survive, but my entire wage was tips. But that was working till three o'clock in the morning getting the light back from Peckham. Huge sacrifices, not very healthy working conditions. Now people are paid a minimum wage.
Speaker 1:I think the problem of individual tips is I think it goes against teamwork and collaboration, because chefs don't get them and other people don't get them bus boys and so on and whatever you want to call them. So I think you can tip, but I think it should now be shared. I've changed my opinion on them being individual, but I actually prefer when service is included at a lower rate. So I think 10% has been added to your bill. What it's not worth it, I think a discretionary or 5%. Please take it off if you think it's worth it, paid. If not not. So I would say a standardized service amount. So I tell you something else there's a new restaurant in my town opened up, where you order by an app at the table. The only thing we do is bring it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And there's no chat or anything, and really that should just be the efficiency of the bringing and, but there's no real discussion of menu. There's no conversation.
Speaker 2:Well, most of the time, it's not 10%, jay, it's 12.5%.
Speaker 1:Well, there you go, yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's interesting that there are certain clubs and restaurants that we go to who automatically add that to everything you buy. Okay, that's one thing, but you know that going in. I suppose the other side of it is, though, that there are barbers, cab drivers and others who expect a tip, and if you go in a London cab now and you pay by card, you get to choose the percentage you give them.
Speaker 2:So you are definitely gonna be giving them a tip and I find it very unusual that certain jobs absolutely exist on the tips which come, some are just added on. Yeah, and I do feel that if it's an organizational thing, if it's on the credit card to it, then it must be that everyone pays 12.5% more. I do find that slightly galling, cause that means that your service can be pretty poor and you're gonna get 12.5% on top automatically, and of course you can say, well, let's take it off, but then you feel like a tight ass and I just think that that, I think, is very poor part of customer service, where you are forced to pay extra. I find that the worst thing about.
Speaker 1:We've all seen strange videos of people in the United States turning up to deliver stuff on doorsteps and then, because they don't get a tip, they start reloading their car with the produce. Why am I being served these videos? And look at this person. You expect to tip. It's your job. So there's a whole generation of younger people who don't want to give tips anyway.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:And I think, if you're doing a job that relies on tips, maybe find someone else who values you slightly more and actually decides to pay you more.
Speaker 2:Well, here's a thing If I go and get my haircut, okay, and it's 15 quid, and I give the guy a couple of quid more, okay, that's a traditional habit that has been built up over years. Okay, If someone goes to a beauty salon and has a treatment of some kind, a massage or whatever it may be and it's 50 quid, do they give the person a tip. Is that part of the culture? I don't know.
Speaker 1:I thought the regularity of their purchasing is worth it rather than tip. You would hope so.
Speaker 2:But it's a very similar thing. There's certain things that seem to demand a tip, certain things you think there's no way I tip that person. If you're in the middle of a supermarket and you say, excuse me, can you show me where the wine section is, they go oh, you come along here and take you along. And they said let's drive down that aisle there. Okay, that's helpful, that's really good. Am I going to slip them a pound?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:You know, and yes, they've been really helpful and useful to me. So again, culturally, I think there's a really odd thing If you're at the till of a supermarket and the person puts stuff in bags for you because you're on your own and you're doing a big shop do you? Slip them a quid. When you've paid 100 quid, are you going to give them an extra pound? Do people do that? I don't think they do. It's weird.
Speaker 1:It's funny. Tarantino, as we know, in Reservoir Dogs wrote a whole scene, about this, about the argument at the cafe at the beginning about the need to get waitresses, and one of them is highly expensive, would you mean you don't tip yeah?
Speaker 2:Steve Buschemi says I don't tip yeah, and he's saying you should tip.
Speaker 1:No, I don't tip, you need to, and their wages are made up, and this is how the whole society runs. And is it, travolta?
Speaker 2:who's defending?
Speaker 1:it or someone else?
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, that's. He's not in Reservoir.
Speaker 1:Dogs. No, it isn't Travolta, sorry, is it Chris Penn?
Speaker 2:I'll have to watch that scene again. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:My last question to you, which is much more kind of dull but interested All these channels that exist for customer service yeah, all these different ways of communicating either a problem or a repurchase, or an upgrade or a change of address, and so it goes on. Which channel has the huge opportunity to become a brilliant customer service channel?
Speaker 2:It's a really good question. I think that if contact centers changed to tele sales teams, I think they would have a massive opportunity. I think move away from service, move back into sales, and every call that comes in is an opportunity to upsell, cross sell. But more importantly, I think we need to get away from siloing calls into retention calls, cancellation calls, complaints. You as an individual should be multi-skilled to be able to handle any sort of inquiry and upsell that inquiry from whatever it's about at that point, and I think if you actually had professional salespeople doing that job who are well trained, with good quality IT, yeah, and a bit of energy, it would be amazing.
Speaker 1:Lovely, I agree.
Speaker 1:That would be it, yeah good Anything else to say, but it's a sort of fact, isn't it, that customer service is everything. I remember I think I told you this, didn't I? I went no, we were going to record this that when my friend René moved here from New Zealand he had to set up his utilities, his broadband, and when he took on one of his pubs and he could not believe because he hadn't lived here for 25 years, whereas in New Zealand you make a call of guy, picks it up and goes, yep, and starts helping you straight away Do you remember I made up the name? He lived in Walla, relu or something.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's a good point. And when we were talking just now about tipping as well, I thought about when you book tickets for something now and let's say the tickets are 100 quid, as they often are, and then they say, oh, there's a booking fee of seven quid. And you go, hang on, I'm online, I'm selecting my seat.
Speaker 2:I'm paying the money. Where's the fee here? Where's the? Who am I actually paying to do this? And I think some time? Yeah, that's just, you know, someone's slipped that in and that's pure profit and we accept that as well. And I think maybe there needs to be a slight backlash where people say no, none of us are going to book our tickets in advance, we're only going to buy them on the day from the box office.
Speaker 2:Imagine the queues you know, and then we would have to pay a booking fee. I think there needs to be a bit of a challenge to these things, which are quite annoying.
Speaker 1:I don't know if there isn't a booking fee. If you walk into the theater, in your book they just add the 350. That's interesting. I might have to consider that.
Speaker 2:I wonder because I remember back in the 80s when bands would announce tours or concerts, people would flock to the actual venue.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I think there's got to be a thing there where, if it's a ridiculous additional charge, they're having a laugh and we should just refuse to pay, and then they're spending. It's on the night and people queue yeah, wow, that's interesting, isn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 1:Well, thanks for tuning in. Yes, indeed If you'd like this episode, do send it to somebody and say listen to this bud. And if you want to write us a review, or just subscribe so you never miss them, we'd love that.
Speaker 2:See you soon.
Speaker 1:Bye for now.
Speaker 2:Bye, bob and Jeremy's Conflab. The reality podcast.