Customer service and mystery shopping expert challenges Mary Portas and Michel Roux on their bleak view of UK customer service.
Interview/guest available: Jonathan Winchester, MD of mystery shopping and customer service experts Shopper Anonymous, to talk about customer service in response to ‘Mary Portas: Queen of Shops’ and ‘Michel Roux’s Service’.
Feature/Filming opportunity: After watching Mary Portas as a ‘secret shopper’, try mystery shopping for real – journalists can be sent undercover to see the reality of mystery shopping and how businesses across the UK are using it to refine their customer service.
As Mary Portas turns ‘Secret Shopper’ and Michel Roux continues to seek ‘Service’, one of the UK’s top experts in customer service has publicly challenged their bleak assessment of Britain’s poor customer service levels.
“Having been carrying out mystery shopping for more than ten years both in the UK and around the world, it’s become clear that there’s one very easy rule to follow if you want good customer service. Go beyond of the shopping malls, the chain restaurants and the big brands and visit the independent retailers, the family-run businesses and the local chains. They’re the businesses that know that customer service is absolutely key to survival and they’ve learned the hard way that they have to care about every single customer.”
“Our mystery shoppers have told us that good customer service is about the simple things such as saying ‘hello’ within 5 seconds of a customer walking through the door; wearing a name badge (our research tells us customer satisfaction levels rise by 12% as soon as staff wear name badges) and engaging with the customer to find out what they really want and how staff really can meet their needs. It’s the independent retailers and restaurants that are able to do these things.
“I firmly believe that customer service in Britain is just as good as the rest of the world – it’s just that most customers are looking in the wrong place for it.”
