Warning Customer Service professional rant coming up
Hignett and Clifford....my favourite.
Right, cards on table. I work in a senior management position for one of our major brands here in the UK and I also do side consultancy, my role is Customer Service.
Social media is make or break these days and it can damage a brand but it can be an over reaction
Example -
I use the number 1A bus Monday-Friday. It is generally on time, the driver acknowledges me. It's fairly clean. Do I tell the company? No. They are providing the service I pay for
One day, the 1A is late by 15 minutes. The driver is abrupt and the bus is filthy. It's the first time in months I've seen anything like this. It's not the usual bus, its not easy access and is old. It looks like this may be a replacement bus, perhaps a breakdown. I consider whether the company should have better back up buses. I also note the timetable on the bus stop has not been corrected since some changes last week.
Now you don't see that I've had 50 perfectly reasonable journeys to my one but if I and 3 other passengers raise an issue your perception is 'oh that 1A is always late, its got grumpy drivers and dirty buses'. I then notice on my post a comment by Ian and one by Andy (examples)
Ian says - What would you prefer? For them not to run the bus? New buses are expensive, fares would rise
Andy says the driver was probably stressed and the bus wasn't planned to be in service. They did their best. Timetables are not GNE, Ring Nexus
Now Ian and Andy with the amount of posts come across as official representatives, especially if I make my post on a weekend or out of monitored times.
Now the Nexus response......If I ring BA with a complaint about Heathrow I won't be fobbed off with 'its BAA not BA' - They'll feed my complaint back to BAA. Thats what good service is, its simply bad practice that GNE don't have a working relationship with Nexus over issues which clearly affect their brand and reputation
Ian and Andy have no customer service training, they may know timetables, bus regs and tickets but they know nothing of brand, perception and quite frankly politeness (and no Mr Clifford, you should not call female posters 'hun')
In some cases a customer is paying GNE close to £1,000 a year on ticketing (something which GNE failed to note when refusing to add extra travel for Christmas and New Years Day) and they should expect a professional response no matter how trivial the complaint may be.
My personal P.O.A (plan of action) for GNE would be -
1) Close the Facebook wall to posters outside of Office Hours, direct links to journey planner, myjourney and Nexus should be made clear.
2) Sunday working should not be remote, an office based individual should be available for all queries. You are a multi multi million pound business. Act like one.
3) Hours should be extended past 6pm. The rush hour is still in force, buses remain busy until 7-8pm on some routes. There should be service.
4) Make it clear GNE are the only official response. Other posters (if you allow them) are expressing individual views, they are not representative of GNE. Yes it is an open forum but it is your page. Your brand and business, you control it not the users. You are there to help and support, not battle. Customer is King.
5) Make use of LiveChat and Twitter more effectively. Twitter is a lot less public and easy to navigate and minor complaints can be handled quicker without the audience. LiveChat should be promoted more for quicker first point resolution
6) Policies and above minor complaints should NEVER be discussed on a Facebook wall. The customer should receive a phone call or a letter. Telling a customer 'we haven't received this or taking a smarmy attitude (as they do) is not acceptable. Contact the customer. Empathise
7) For gods sake train your staff. To you it might not be a major thing that a 56 was 15 minutes late and someone had to get a taxi to hospital/work etc but THAT is the most important thing that will affect them that day. Treat it like that.
8) It is simply not acceptable to copy and paste the contact us form. Address the customer, apologise, explain (even on facebook) the procedure for contacting us and make it personal! . If a customer tells you to 'f off' simply respond calmly and say 'I am sorry you feel that way, if you want to get in touch with this incident which has obviously affected you please do so'
9) First Point of Contact Resolution. 99.9% of the time your customer wants an apology. Nothing more, nothing less. Apologise, empathise
RE: Anything and Everything :)