Giving your store and call centre staff the responsibility and means to solve customer problems can not only turn a negative into a positive but also pay off for the wider business

John Lewis

Would you let store managers visit customers in their homes if they had an accident in one of your shops? This is what Irish supermarket Superquinn does, and its chairman Simon Burke is adamant that nipping problems in the bud by giving staff the autonomy to deal with customer problems is the right way to go about things.

Similarly DSGi chief executive John Browett talked at the Retail Week Conference about how front-line staff - be it on the shopfloor or in a call centre - rather than those at senior level, were most aware of the quality of customer service. He said: “Staff who first face problems are now held accountable and this accountability has been pushed through the whole company.”

So what are the benefits of making front-line staff responsible for solving customer problems, and how can you go about it?

Burke, also chairman at Majestic Wine, is a passionate believer that a well-handled complaint usually has a positive outcome. “Staff accepting a customer complaint at face value and acting quickly can turn a negative into a positive. You can make these customers into advocates of your brand,” he says.

Dennis Reid, chairman at consultancy Retail Performance Specialists, says that resolving issues first time shows that a retailer cares enough to deal with problems. He says to do this it’s essential staff are knowledgeable about the products they’re selling. “Customers walk into a store knowing more about products than the staff on the shopfloor,” he adds.

Customer issues stand the chance of being solved quicker by being dealt with by front-line staff. Reid says that the efficiency of solving an enquiry is reduced as a problem is escalated through the company. “Five people become involved rather than one person dealing with the issue,” he says. Burke adds that escalating a query damages the customer’s faith in the problem being resolved.

For Burke, giving staff the flexibility to solve customer problems is also fundamental to good service. He says store managers are given the widest possible scope when it comes to taking responsibility for a complaint. “With Superquinn, if there is an accident in store, store managers are allowed to visit them in their homes and present them with a gift to stop the situation going to court. This allows us to settle the issue with a couple of hundred pounds rather than £5,000,” he says.

Vertex, which runs call centres on behalf of several major retailers, has seen a similar trend with the costs of dealing with complaints falling by giving staff more autonomy. “A mail order client removed the predetermined limit on customer refunds and the number of refunds actually went down in about three months. The staff treated the money as their own,” says consulting director Philip Michell.

Problem solved

While empowering staff can be seen as crucial to solve customer queries, it can be a challenge to rely on such a large number of people to provide good service. John Lewis’s selling academy - a programme teaching product knowledge, customer service and selling techniques among other skills - trained 30,000 partners to create consistency in customer service. Staff are trained at different levels, defined by how much product knowledge they are given.

Burke says that it is important for a retailer’s staff to understand the affairs of the company to be able to answer queries. He adds this has to be preferable to passing customers off to other service channels. “Rather than those awful automated menus, customers prefer to see staff. I see the attraction with email, because you can deal with responses in your time. However, I don’t think it is a substitute for complaints being dealt with there and then on the shopfloor,” he says.

Unfortunately, all the training in the world does not mean staff will be able to solve every customer query or problem that they are faced with. This is where acknowledgement comes in.

Burke emphasises that what is more important than training is the culture of a company. He says: “Store staff have it drilled into them that customers are having it on with them. So a culture of assuming the customer is right, even if you don’t agree with them and doing that with grace, is important.” He adds that most customers are not looking for compensation, but acknowledgement and an apology - which can be given the moment staff are faced with a complaint.

Good customer service has financial rewards for staff in Carphone Warehouse. Each store has a net promoter score that measures customer satisfaction. Bonuses for store staff are based on customer service not sales, and store managers are judged on a range of measurements beyond sales, like customer and team metrics. “Staff satisfaction can also increase through solving issues, as it makes them feel empowered,” says Reid.

Another benefit for staff that comes through customer service training is flexibility for staff to move around the company. John Lewis senior manager customer development Amanda Hickey says: “The academy allows staff to develop their skills and knowledge, which can lead to new roles and promotion.” The same resources used in the selling academy will be used to train call centre staff. John Lewis is opening three new call centres, one in July and another two in November this year.

DSGi believes that bringing its call centre back in-house is helping to resolve customer issues more effectively - a spokesman said that because the call centre is now measured on that criteria (among others), it is accountable. The retailer also has a better handle on the data it captures through its call centre and so the areas where it can make further improvements.

Vertex has seen cost savings as a key benefit for retailers as a result of giving staff the responsibility to solve complaints first time. Michell says companies see a 10% to 25% saving in operational costs, as repeat contacts and average handling time will reduce. He says: “The average handling time will increase at first by about 10%, but after a couple of months this will reduce depending on the support system in place.”

Key facets of the support system are access to a customer relationship management system, with customer details on it, and a knowledge management system. This can act as training it itself, teaching the agents how to answer particular queries.

Multichannel response

Another issue for retailers is that they have to realise that contact with customer service staff is not necessarily the first point of contact. “They don’t take into account customers have looked at the website first.” This is an area that needs improvement.

An Accenture survey, conducted in November last year, showed that only 39% of consumers are satisfied with their experience of online chat and 28% are satisfied with self-service options to deal with issues. Accenture head of customer relationship management for the UK and Ireland Neil Miller says retailers should focus on their digital channel service capabilities, which have yet to impress UK consumers.

However, Shop Direct is an example of a retailer empowering customers to help themselves. “There has been an increase in the number of customers self-serving by reappointing a delivery through the website or ringing an automated service. This has the benefits of being available 24/7 and it is cost effective,” says Michell.

Email is a medium that is increasingly being used over the more traditional customer service channels. A drop in phone calls has seen a proportional rise in email, says Michell. “Customer expectation now is that email enquiries will be solved in no more than four hours,” he adds.

Whatever channel a customer uses, the demand for the problem to be solved efficiently remains. In the Accenture survey, one in three customers say they have increased service quality expectations in the past year. However, nearly six in 10 customers say their service expectations are never or only sometimes met. So it is up to retailers to ensure customers are lifetime ones.

Why service is key

  • 1 in 3 customers have increased service quality expectations in the past year
  • 58% of customers say their expectations are never or only sometimes met
  • 64% of consumers have switched providers in at least one industry sector as a result of poor service