I recently had a celebration meal at a top name restaurant in Birmingham and whilst the food was very good, the service was quite poor, certainly not what I was expecting and probably not what the internationally renowned chef had in mind when he put his name to the establishment. But then sometimes things do go wrong, and this could have been an unfortunate, but isolated instance.
What really surprised and disappointed me though was that no-one seemed to care and we were never asked for feedback during the meal, at the end or even in the days afterwards. I left contact details when I made the booking so could easily have been reached by a member of staff wanting to make sure we had all had a great experience. I was left feeling that they not only hadn’t really looked after us very well, but they didn’t really care either.
To me, that’s not just poor customer service, it’s also a bad business decision. When we provide support to one of our clients, I want to know how they feel we performed. This feedback is really important to me and allows me to focus on improving the areas of my business that deliver the best customer experience. Almost always the feedback is very positive, just as we strive for, but on the odd occasion that a customer isn’t delighted we get an opportunity to put things right, ensuring that the same mistakes are never repeated.
That’s why on the completion of every job ticket we contact customers and ask them to complete a short and simple feedback survey for us.
If we see any responses with scores lower than our 90% customer satisfaction benchmark, we immediately investigate and take the opportunity to put things right, but in addition, we monitor the overall feedback on a monthly and quarterly basis to see how our performance is trending.
In the last full quarter (May to July), we saw a very positive picture with improvements on all key measures. Overall, customers scored our performance as 4.77 out of a possible 5. When asked if they would be willing to recommend us to other businesses, 97% said yes, which is particularly pleasing. We recognise that when our clients have a problem they need a quick response, followed by a fast and complete solution. We therefore monitor our performance closely on these measures. Our latest results are:
“The initial response from Microtrading was very prompt” – 96.7%
“The service ticket was resolved in a timely manner” – 95.9%
“I am very satisfied with the outcome of the service ticket” – 96.7%
If you aren’t experiencing this level of service when you need it, give us a call on 0121 784 0077 to find out more about how our award winning IT support and managed IT services can help your business.
Andrew Penlington.
Andrew Penlington is a director of Microtrading Ltd. This IT company was recently nominated by a customer for the CV Magazine Technology Innovator Award award and they were voted the Best IT Support Solutions Provider in the UK.
Andrew is our guest blogger for September.
For a confidential discussion about improving and monitoring your customer service, contact us on 01905 885 285.
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