Bad Chicken…

This happened to me last Wednesday. It’s a true story:

Me: I drive round to the next window (which is shut) where I sit for five mins while KFC ignore me. Eventually someone wearing a team leaders badge opens the window, takes my money and hands me the order.

I drive off swearing never to visit them again. And if you think I am being hard on the Colonel then I have similar experiences up and down the high street every week. As customers we are so immune to bad service that we will seemingly put up with anything and the staff are so immune to good service that they seem not to have the slightest recognition that all is not well.

So what is going wrong? These companies all have great branding, they have mission statements, they set goals, they do training (though in what I've no idea) and adhere to every regulation going but something basic is wrong with the way they serve us.

Contrast this with my recent experience at Euro Disney where staff were cordial, attentive, mostly bi-lingual or tri-lingual, very helpful and appeared to make every effort to help my family have a good time. The UK Company that manages to reproduce this will have to fight off customers with a stick. So what is going right?

The difference that makes the difference is Values. Disney recruit, assess, train and fire people based on their values. Values are what drive us, the reason we do things the way we do them. I’ll cover more on values and how to use them next time.

In the meantime, as an experiment, have a think about YOUR customer service values and how many other people in your company share exactly the same values as you - you’ll find it interesting…

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