Retail


The importance of delivering excellent customer service


Retail Therapy


By Tony Elvin General manager, Touchwood


Businesses face a tougher time than ever to deliver exceptional service, but it’s never been more important. Customer service is always on


the agenda for discussion with my teams. I often ask: “What does exceptional customer service look like to you?” I want my team to understand


what it is that they appreciated and how that level of service made them feel, only then can they understand how they can deliver that for someone else. My ‘go to’ reference point for


exceptional customer service is an old Italian restaurant I used to frequent with my wife in Barnet, North London called ‘Mia Natalie’. It was quite shabby looking


outside and we would regularly walk past it to get to a swanky modern Italian restaurant at the top of the high-street. The food was okay, but we were never remembered from one week to the next and on this particular occasion the restaurant was fully booked and didn’t have a table for us. It was my wife that suggested


we walk back down the street to go to the little shabby Italian restaurant, because I had my heart set on Italian food. But, it was with some trepidation that we entered Mia Natalie as we couldn’t even read the menu due to all the condensation in the window. Reassuringly the restaurant was


briskly busy and we were greeted like long lost relatives, shown to our table and the waiter then said something very bold, he said: “I don’t think you’ve been here before.” Huge gamble right there if we


had been a few times but they had not recognised us, like the last place. He said: “Please tell me your


name and what kind of food you like to eat, I’ll recommend something that’s perfect for you.” Straight away my wife said: “He


loves his seafood.” “Then Mr Tony, you’re in the right place,” he said. “Our special board here is full of


fresh seafood, we’ve got the calamari, the mussels, spaghetti fruitti di mare...” I was sold and we had a fantastic dinner, portions were too big to


Tony Elvin: Customer service is key


Sarah Phillips: Challenging times


Region suffers


more closures West Midlands high-streets were among the hardest hit by store closures in the first half of the year, according to new figures. A PwC survey reveals a net


fall in retail units of 2.2 per cent across the region, with 148 openings but 261 closures. The half-year net decline in


the West Midlands is greater than the average on Britain’s high-streets of 1.83 per cent. The West Midlands and East Midlands (-2.1 per cent) placed second and third respectively, after Wales, for percentage of store closures. Wolverhampton experienced


‘Their teams care about the guest experience, their teams are empowered to go the extra mile and they clearly value their guests’


finish and we were given a voucher to get a free bottle of wine next time. We got one of these vouchers every time we visited from then on and but never remembered to bring it because it wasn’t the offer or the deal that made us go back, it was the service. Over the years, Mia Natalie didn’t


always get it right, nobody does, but they cared if they got it wrong and would always make amends. My wife had the first night of her hen weekend there, we returned with our daughter when she was born and even though we’d long moved away from Barnet, years later, I was on a training course in North London and I took everybody on the training course to Mia Natalie where I was lifted off the floor with a bear hug and everyone got free cocktails before dinner. We had an amazing night. Maybe it’s easier for a small


business to create that kind of culture? Well, a little bit further from home but another wonderful benchmark for customer service is


Disney World, and for somewhere that welcomes millions of visitors every year it’s astonishing that they really are that good. Of course Walt Disney himself


was entirely customer focused. I love this quote: “Whatever you do, do it well. Do it so well that when people see you do it, they will want to come back and see you do it again, and they will want to bring others and show them how well you do what you do.” Whether it’s little Mia Natalie or


the gargantuan Disney World, both of these businesses are entirely customer focused. Their teams care about the guest experience, their teams are empowered to go the extra mile and they clearly value their guests. As business leaders, we must be


role models for these traits, not just with our guests and customers but with our own teams: catching people doing the right thing, praising our teams and making our people feel special, just as we want our customers to feel.


the greatest impact across the region’s cities with a net loss of -13 stores, with six opening and 19 closing. This was followed by Birmingham (-10 stores) and Coventry (-nine stores). However, the high-streets of


some of the region’s towns are bucking the trend with Halesowen enjoying a net growth of one store and Solihull and Stafford both maintaining their store numbers with no net loss. Sarah Phillips, retail and


consumer specialist for PwC in the Midlands, said: “We are seeing retailers operating in an increasingly challenging environment and this is particularly exasperated in city centre locations where there is a high density of retailers. “However, the rate of


closures in the region’s cities is surprising at a time we are seeing significant investment and regeneration taking place across the region. “Town centre shopping


centres, such as Halesowen, Solihull and Stafford, are bucking the trend with net growth or no closures. These are demonstrating how retailers can innovate and adapt nimbly to the environment.”


October 2019 CHAMBERLINK 81


Sector Focus


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