Whatever Happened to Customer Service?
28. Sep, 2009 
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I’ve just come back from spending 2 weeks in one of my favourite countries: Japan.
And I have to say that standards of service there are so much higher than in the UK – shop staff are more friendly and helpful, more prepared to take responsibility for the customer’s needs, the streets are cleaner, queues move quicker etc. And it got me to wondering: whatever happened to the concept of customer service in the UK and most of Europe?
Far from the customer being at the centre of things, the customer is often forced to conform to the supplier’s processes, processes that are more often than not managed by people who have forgotten how to smile, forgotten what courtesy is and forgotten that the customer is king.
What do we need to do to match the Japanese for efficiency, courtesy and standards? What do we need to do to get staff at all levels to take ownership of what they do, to take pride in what they do and to place the customer back at the center of what they do?
