Don Hales - Wow! Thats What I call Service: Stories of Great Customer Service from the Wow! Awards

Ecademy Press
6 Woodland Rise, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 8QD, UK

2007 Don Hales and Derek Williams. All rights reserved.

Cover Design by Martin Coote
Book Design & Typsetting by AuthorHouse
Set in Minion Pro 12 on 18pt

ISBN: 978-1-905823-16-1
ISBN: 1-905823-16-9

First published 06/14/07 by Ecademy Press

Printed and Bound by:
Lightning Source in the UK and USA

Printed on acid-free paper from managed forests. This book is printed on demand, so no copies will be remaindered or pulped.

The right of Don Hales and Derek Williams to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright holder except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the copyright holders written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publishers.

To Dons grandsons, Finlay and Joseph,
and
Dereks granddaughter, Lilly,
customers of the future!

Every experience is a learning opportunity.

We can learn a huge amount from making mistakes or from other peoples mistakes.

But if we really aspire to be the best then we have to learn from the best.

These stories are about some of the very best customer service from businesses in the UK (with just a few examples from other countries).

The stories come from two sources:

1. The National Customer Service Awards.

Don Hales has been organiser and chairman of judges for the National Customer Service Awards since 2000. He has inspected the written entries and seen the presentations from literally thousands of individuals and businesses covering every sector of business in the UK.

The stories from Don provide a fascinating insight into what makes some of these businesses tick and how they have achieved greatness.

2. The WOW! Awards

Derek Williams created The WOW! Awards in 1999. His mission is to raise standards of customer service in the UK to the point that visitors from Florida say, WOW! Have you seen what a great job the Brits are doing?

Nominations for The WOW! Awards have to come from genuine third party customers. Individuals and businesses cannot enter themselves.

Many of The WOW! Awards stories come straight from the customer and are largely unedited. Some might be quite short or even appear quite ordinary. But in every case a customer felt WOWed! enough to make a nomination. And that is what every business should be aspiring to.

The greatest surprise with The WOW! Awards is the enthusiasm that customers have for making nominations. And in many instances, customers have gone out of their way and incurred extra expense to present a certificate to the winning businesses.

For us, this is probably the most important section of the book.

It will always be individuals who make the difference.

Although, as customers, we might first select a business based on its brand name and its reputation we will very soon start to make judgments based on the service that we received from individuals.

Individuals have the power to make or break the relationship. All of the time and money that has been invested in development and marketing could be completely wasted if someone in the front line is not able to meet our expectations. We firmly believe that the front liners are the most important people in the organisation. And the role of management should be to support those front liners in the job that they do.

We are also great believers in catching people doing things right!

In many businesses, management time is dominated with catching people doing things wrong. Someone gets called into the managers office because they have failed to hit the target or a customer has complained.

How much better it would be if the majority of management time was taken up with catching people doing things right. Some people might never have been to Head Office or met the directors of the company. Wouldnt it be great if they were called in occasionally to be given praise?

And when we start to catch people doing things right that reinforces the behaviour that we are all looking for.

For many ladies and, indeed, gentleman, their wedding day will be one of the most memorable of their lives. Weddings are, of course, very big business and sometimes in the midst of all the arrangements in the weeks and months (and, in some cases, years) leading up to the great event the commercial interests of those providing the various services can be less than in sympathy with the occasion itself.

Not so for weddings organised by Jane Fair, the wedding organiser at the Holiday Inn, Doncaster part of the QMH UK hotel group. Since joining the hotel in 2002, Jane has established a tremendous reputation for ensuring smooth, carefree arrangements for hundreds of brides. Remembering her own wedding day, she sets out with the sole intention of ensuring that for every couple their wedding will be the most memorable day of their life.

Although contracted to fairly standard office hours, Jane takes a very flexible approach to her working week. She will often work late into the evening and at weekends to meet customers at times most convenient to them and, of course, she attends all the weddings even building her own holidays around them.

She handles every kind of wedding ceremony from traditional to modern, religious and non-religious, ones with a service and those without, Asian, Jewish and more recently including civil partnerships. Jane studies the needs and goes to fantastic lengths to ensure that perfect day every time. The case of civil partnerships illustrates the point. As soon as she knew that these were about to take place, she researched the background both in the UK and in other countries, especially America, where they had been taking place for some time, in order to be able to offer them as soon as they were legally available.

When discussing a potential wedding with a couple at the start of her relationship with them, Jane never pushes them into deciding to use her facilities. She believes that they will know if the venue choice is right for them. And if so, she swings into action.

Diplomacy is high on Janes list of required skills for her role as she often has to preside over family differences and she tactfully glides the decision in favour of the bride and grooms best interest. Janes aim is to make every couple feel that theirs is the only wedding she is handling, whereas she actually organises about 120 a year.

As a hotel professional, Jane has worked in every department at the hotel and, on the day, she will assist in the kitchen or bar, if the need arises. She obtains fantastic co-operation from her hotel colleagues, as they know how important the day is to the customers and how hard Jane works to deliver the perfect day.