WHEN CUSTOMER SERVICE AND COMMUNITY UNITE
The Quality Service Awards recognises those businesses who achieved customer service excellence in an extraordinary year
IN 2020, SOMETHING REMARKABLE TOOK PLACE IN CUSTOMER SERVICE.
An interplay occurred between businesses, large and small, over the first weeks and then months of the pandemic, that saw a shift in values. Economic considerations took a back seat to moral responsibility. Caring and individual attention shown to customers was more genuine than ever.
At the top, the profit for shareholders no longer was seen as the chief responsibility of doing business. This shift put the community as the most important stakeholder. And as a result, corporations and businesses turned their focus to see what they could do to share the burden of keeping the community safe from a virus that moved silently and ever so fast. This year, customer service team members helped out customers beyond what’s been generally needed. Because of unprecedented
vulnerabilities and confusion, customers have sought more than just remedies to their purchase problems. Customers have come seeking help with life’s ups and downs, to share a laugh, to remind themselves that there are people who genuinely care.
And while it’s also been a time of extreme difficulty for customer service – with upheavals of longstanding ways of doing business – the staff of the businesses listed in the Quality Service Awards rallied. Each day during the peak of the pandemic, they remained savvy, clever and calm in their approach to customers, so much so that the importance of kindness and understanding once again became paramount.
In the years leading up to the new century, some 21 years ago, the world faced the Y2K bug, and responses were prepared based on ‘worse-case’ scenarios that would help manage the fallout of a potential worldwide computer collapse. Banks could shut down, airlines might be unable to fly, lifts in buildings wouldn’t work, and from factories to telecommunications, the infrastructure of modern society was at risk of simply not functioning. Years of planning went into ensuring if this happened, we would manage until the problem was fixed. Fortunately, nothing happened. But even back then, operationally, audits were done to ensure that essential staff had what they needed to keep customers happy. Key among
those staff were customer service personnel, the people at the front-of-shop.
Fast forward to early March, and we faced a scenario far worse than anything that a computer programming glitch could cause.
The pandemic had a significant impact on the way customer service departments operated.
The customer service professionals we spoke with all shared a single aim: to help the person seeking assistance, clarification or advice in any way they could. Many consumer concerns weren’t business related, either. In their isolation and confusion many people wanted to make personal connections where they knew a friendly face or voice would be there to help.
Customer service teams have long known the reality of their jobs extends well beyond making sure the customer is satisfied sufficiently enough to want to return their custom.
According to Victoria Simpson, who has managed call centres for more than 20 years, a remarkable thing started to happen during the COVID-19 lockdown: customers would call just for a chat. “We soon realised how difficult it was for many people who lived alone, and were now unable to leave their house to socialise like they normally did,” she told Reader’s Digest. “One woman told our call centre staff member that she was just calling to hear another person’s voice. It’s calls like that which remind us that customer service call centres serve a dual purpose; we owe our customer a community service as well.”
Unlike pre-COVID times, customers and customer service staff were living a shared experience. Advice was offered on ways to ease boredom, anxiety or loneliness. And in some instances, emergency health line numbers were provided. Follow-up calls also became an important measure, just to ensure the customer was OK, and perhaps to ensure they didn’t go days without hearing someone’s voice.
Corporate and business responsibility came to be viewed in a broader sense, as a social service as well as a profit-making function.
Being a Reader’s Digest 2021 Quality Service Award winner means
THE COMMUNITY SEES WHAT GREAT WORK THESE BUSINESSES DO
that the businesses listed in this supplement share a business legacy – recognition of having values that sets their customer service apart from others in the marketplace. Businesses who won the thanks of customers this year by winning a Quality Service Award, have done so because they possess robust, caring and talented teams. Their management style also says much about that success. The community sees what great work these businesses do, and they appreciate it.
While the pandemic of 2020 may have shifted the standard markers of business success, customer service remains core among those success markers. Congratulations to the businesses who have been rewarded by their customers for providing benchmark service. Your success in the Quality Service Awards is well deserved.