I had an interesting experience when flying to Scotland the other week which made me reflect on the impact of your supply chain on your customer’s experiences.
I arrived at Glasgow airport, made my way to baggage reclaim where I was intercepted by a guy from BA’s Arrival Services. He immediately informed me that my checked-in luggage had not made it, it was still in London. Ok, not much I can do about that and he had at least spared me the ordeal of standing by the baggage carousel for an eternity. He then told me that the bag would be coming up on the afternoon flight which arrives at 15.30 and that they would get it couriered direct to my hotel in Edinburgh. Ok so that saves me dragging the bag around with me all day. That would have been a big save.
This is where it all started to go wrong. Arriving at the hotel in the early evening there was no sign of the baggage. Calling the couriers (I had been given this number at the airport) I was told that they don’t deliver to hotels until the evening anyway.
Eventually the bag turned up at 9.00 the next morning, just as I was due to leave for my next appointment. A very quick change into some fresh clothes meant that I was able to make my appointment on time and feeling so much fresher.
The down side of course was having to spend the evening in the clothes I had been in since 5.00 that morning and waking up wondering whether I had time to do some quick shopping before my appointment was due. The courier who delivered the bag told me that it didn’t reach them until 11.00 at night by which time their delivery van was already out. What happened to it in the seven and a half hours since it arrived? We’ll probably never know.
Now the guy from Arrivals Service had taken my contact numbers at the airport but at no time did he, BA Customer Service or the couriers contact me to keep me in the loop. A subsequent email to BA asking them if they thought this service was even adequate produced a limp reply stating that this was a top priority for their managers. I should hate to be involved in stuff that has a low priority with them.
I don’t know what went wrong (I don’t even know why the bag didn't make it) and to be honest I don’t care. All I know is that what could have been a slight misdemeanour turned into a triumph was instead turned into a real annoyance. Is this the kind of customer experience you want your customers to have? No, of course not and having someone who takes overall responsibility for issues like this means you could easily recover and make a good impression despite the odd hiccup.
I think what depressed me most was that BA had a complete structure in place to deal with lost luggage, which intimates that it happens a lot. While this system was geared to returning the luggage I felt that it was designed around making it more efficient for the people involved, not the least the couriers with their scheduled deliveries. This makes the operation cost effective I have no doubt (though not misplacing it in the first place would cost less) but is not going to enamour them to the customers involved.
So the thought behind all of this was, how do you ensure that any contractors or sub-contractors used by your business maintain the kind of standards you are setting for customer service?
Nearly every business will have to outsource some part of their operation, no matter how trivial. Although some of these services seem trivial what is the potential impact on your business/customers if these services are not handled in line with your ethos for customer service?
I personally have a whole raft of experiences of just this kind of thing and the example above is just the latest. I am sure that you can draw on your own experiences without much difficulty, unfortunately, for other examples of this kind. You won’t always know whether a contractor is involved but typically, delivery for example, is often contracted out.
Of course this overlaps with supply chain management and could be labelled Contractor Relationship Management. Nonetheless it is still important if you are trying to ensure that your customer’s experience is above average.
Taking delivery as an example, this is often the only customer facing touch point for a number of businesses. So your offer, order-taking and dispatch can be really slick and easy from the customer’s point of view and this could so easily be spoilt by the delivery contractor (e.g. damaged goods arriving, boxes left out in the rain, goods not delivered and the customer being told that they will need to collect from a depot, etc.) P.S. I am not picking on couriers, it’s just an example. Often the customers will not complain but simply vote with their feet and shop elsewhere in the future.
What is in place to monitor that? It is a known fact that a lot of businesses don’t even realise that they have lost a customer because they have no mechanism in place to check this. How are you going to ensure that you get feedback on your customer’s experiences? Is there any follow up in place? I have had people tell me that they don’t follow up for fear of being moaned at! Isn’t that the point? How can you fix what you don’t know about? It’s also useful to know what the customers think you do well.
So having a feedback mechanism, ideally a pro-active one should help recover existing situations and eliminate them in the future.
What kind of service level agreement do you have with your suppliers? What kind of contingency is built-in to cover unavoidable situations? Ideally you are going to contract with a company that has a similar ethos to your own business, but you may still need to tie up some loose ends to minimise bad experiences for your customer. All too often you get the feeling (rightly or wrongly) that a particular contractor has been used because they are the cheapest and if your ethos is to “pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap” then that fits in nicely. If it isn’t then you will need to consider the potential impact on your customers of that level of service.
In summary ensure that you have considered all of the touch points your customers have with your business, either directly or indirectly and that they meet the general criteria laid down with regard to your expected customer experience. Or lose a customer like BA has.
