Comment: Putting customer service first? Some retailers are having a laugh

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Having been to the US on holiday I was reminded of my father, who always said Americans smile from the teeth outwards.

Having been to the US on holiday I was reminded of my father, who always said Americans smile from the teeth outwards. Whether that’s the case or not, I’d rather be smiled at and told to “Have a nice day” than what I often get in the UK - an attitude of ‘I’m doing you a favour by serving you’.

Such attitudes look outdated in the multichannel world, where ‘word of mouth’ becomes ‘word of web’. Thousands can be made aware of a retailer’s poor service through a single tweet or blog post, and customer power is at an all-time high with a retailer’s competition just a click away.

An effective approach is to think of yourself as a customer service business that happens to sell whatever it is you sell, rather than a retailer. I’m pretty sure you’d engage with, and talk to, your customers quite differently from how you do now.

You might add a prominent call centre number to your home page (unlike many retailers), or rethink your site’s terms and conditions so it reads less like Paul Smith’s: “In return for allowing you access to this website, we require you to accept the terms and conditions of use set out in this notice. If you are not prepared to agree to these terms then you must immediately leave this website and you may not use or access our services or our site’s facilities.”

And you’d surely not be a retailer that still expects a customer to return goods at their own expense, such as Cocosa.

There is a relatively simple business case for being a customer-centric retailer: happy customers = more frequent purchases + higher average order values + greater lifetime value + less propensity to churn + positive reviews and word of web. Happy customers also attract their friends and other customers like them to shop with you.

Forward-thinking retailers are appointing customer directors with responsibility for determining shopper experience through every touchpoint, as well as customer communications. And that’s a good start.

However, to be truly customer-centric, your entire business culture needs to live and breathe customer centricity, and that must come from the top.