In this workshop attendees will have the chance to look at how a culture of good customer service can transform your retail business. Participants will be presented with examples of retailers that have used successful incentives to encourage staff to create and maintain this culture.

Speaker: Jo Moran, Head of Customer Service, Marks & Spencer

During her 27 years’ experience with Marks & Spencer, Jo has progressed through a varied range of roles including store management, franchise arrangements and overseas operations, change management programmes and, most latterly, customer service across all channels for the M&S UK operation. 
 
In her position as Head of Customer Service, she played a fundamental role in leading the recovery of the brand’s service ethos through establishing a clear customer proposition supported by the appropriate structure, recruitment, training, performance management and reward mechanisms.

Headline findings include:

• 29% of organizations have a dedicated customer services manager / director ultimately responsible for their customer service.  15% of organizations leave customer service in the hands of the sales director whilst 13% do likewise in the hands of the operations director
• 39% of the panel have seen an increase in their customer services budget over the last 12 months, with only 9% seeing a decrease.  19% of organizations don’t have a specific customer services budget.
• 89% of organizations measure customer satisfaction levels, 59% on an on-going basis and 30% occasionally.
• 20% of organizations say they achieve continuously excellent customer satisfaction levels whilst further 53% say they are, on the whole, good.  Only 4% admit there’s room for improvement.
• Only 1 in three organizations say their customer satisfaction research is central to their on-going strategy, though a further 40% say some changes are implemented depending on the results.  Almost 1 in five organizations admit to there being a gap between the research and acting upon it.
• ¼ of the panel say their organization gives customer service training the highest importance, whilst a further 46% say they give it ‘reasonable’ importance.
• Almost ½ the panel admit that whilst social media currently plays a limited part in the whole customer service mix, it is becoming more important.  13% say it’s currently central to it, though this figure is likely to increase.
• Given a list of options, the panel rate their organizations’ performance highest in terms of dealing with product / service information queries and reputation management. 
• The most important area to an organization in terms of their customer service offering is handling complaints quickly and efficiently.
• Over ½ the panel claim they give their customer service staff as much decision making responsibility as possible, whilst 34% say their organizations offer a genuine career structure with recognised promotion opportunities.
• The 3 areas that are seen as the most important qualities looked for in a customer services employee are a strong work ethic, a team player and product & service knowledge.