Editors Blog

A couple of years after I became editor of a small business to business publication named Call Centre Focus, a new sales manager was appointed (against my wishes I might add - I thought he was much too young!). His name was Simon Thorpe and we discovered that we had a lot in common, including a mutual love of films, good food, cheesey 80s music, and cocktails.

I do sometimes wonder why organisations persist in offering customer service via email. I don't think I've ever had a good experience using it. Most often, I'll send an email, wait in vain for a response and then a couple of days later pick up the phone to find out what's going on, when I have to explain all over again what I'd already painstakingly explained in the email.

How much of good customer service depends on the proximity of the customer? It seems like a bit of an odd question, but bear with me...

Earlier this week I stayed in a hotel. It was very reasonably priced, so I wasn't exactly expecting the Ritz. However, because it was a hotel and some level of hospitality should kinda come as standard, I was not expecting to be made to feel as though I was nothing more than a huge inconvenience.

This week I was on a train to Cardiff that somehow managed to fail in one of the core requirements of this mode of transport - it didn't stop at Swindon, one of its scheduled stations.

So Apple’s stock continues to rise. Already the world’s most valuable company, this week the computer giant’s market value rose to $600billion. That’s more than twice the value of Microsoft. So what makes a company so much more successful than its rivals? I know you are expecting me to say customer service is the big differentiator here, and you’d be right – in a way...