Customer service - examples to warn us
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2005-01-30 15:07:00 - Graham Ellis"Open" says the sign in big bright words on the end of the snack kiosk set amongst the sandhills in Vazon bay, Guernsey. What a relief - I had completed a course on Friday and was spending Saturday waiting for the boat home by doing a little sightseeing; fascinating to see all the French remains from Napoleonic times (carefully labelled and signposted) and the Germain remains from their occupation in the second world war (preserved, but without any interpretation signs) - and I was just dying for a cup of tea; most other places had been closed.
Coat on, deep breath, open car door. Step out and get nearly blow away but, heck, at this stage I'll walk a mile for a cuppa.
And - disappointment. When I reach the kiosk (half hidden by the sands), I discover it's not open; not only that, but the sign is painted on so that 24 hours a day, 7 days a week it sits there as a siren to travellers tempting them to abandon their cars and treck over. I found myself thinking "what a cheek" and "how disrespectful"; it wasn't as if the sign had been left out in error, but a snub on visitors - no doubt my time (and the time of countless other tourists) tracking over to the kiosk was far less valuable than the few minutes it would take for the kiosk owner to change his "open" sign for a "closed" one.
I'm proud of my country, and I'm proud of most of my fellow British. But just once in a while ... an incident like this. I've not been proud when overseas visitors have been ("accidentally") given older large 10p or 50p coins in change, or have been directed from office (a) to office (b) for a service because the woman at office (a) couldn't be bothered. Yet every cloud has a silver lining.
Two senior members of staff from a large and well known company had booked places on an Advanced Perl course to be given by a training outfit somewhere in the Home Counties. The course wasn't scheduled very often so it was really a bit late for one of them, and the other had had to reschedule his family holiday so that he could attend - such was there need for the course. Hotels booked, and the morning of the course they get up early and travel into London on one side, back out on the other to the venue ... arriving at a quiet looking building by taxi from the nearest station. In they walk, to find the place manned by a single receptionist. "Oh - didn't they let you know - the course has been cancelled" she said.
The organisation for whom these two senior staff still work is now an excellent customer of ours; after their disappointment, one of them recalled a Learning to Program in Perl course I had presented to him before we were running them under the "Well House Consultants" banner, and he "Googled" me. Yes, we did (and continue to) offer advanced Perl courses - both for users who are writing large Perl projects and for those who are more concerned with Perl on Internet and Intranet web site.
We have a luxury here at Well House Consultants - the luxury of having a strong enough business that we CAN afford to run courses even if there are very few people booked. Indeed - once your booking is confirmed only the most extreme of circumstances would force a cancellation and that would NOT be due to a lack on numbers. If necessary, we run "one on one". We also have the luxury of a team of thoughtful, mature staff who have been in your shoes as a customer and know how to handle things to ensure that slip-ups are very, very rare and positively solved.