Customer Service
The Bottom Line
BBC
4.6 • 606 Ratings
🗓️ 11 February 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
All businesses rely on customers. So, why do some businesses bend over backwards to keep customers happy, and why do some of them appear not to care? What is the impact of poor customer service on a business and how much does it cost them to invest in improving their infrastructure? Evan Davis discusses dos and don'ts of customer service with an airline, an energy company and a retailer, all of which have tried to completely overhaul their image. Has it worked?
Guests: Kenny Jacobs, Chief Marketing Officer at Ryanair; Neil Clitheroe CEO retail and generation at Scottish Power and Gary Booker, Chief Marketing Officer at Dixons Carphone
Producer: Sally Abrahams Researcher: Sofia Patel.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading this program. In this edition of the bottom line, are you being served? |
| 0:05.0 | We're discussing the do's and don'ts of customer service. |
| 0:09.0 | Hello and welcome to the program. Now if you're someone who often grumbles about rotten customer service, listen on, |
| 0:16.0 | because today we're going to drill down into that topic. Now it is reasonable to expect good service, |
| 0:21.7 | of course, but is it reasonable if you're paying rock bottom prices should you maybe accept |
| 0:26.7 | you just get what you pay for? Well, there is some kind of trade-off between cost and price |
| 0:32.7 | and quality of customer service, and the decision as to how good a business should try to be is one |
| 0:39.0 | of the most interesting that companies make. There is no more interesting case study in this area |
| 0:43.3 | than Ryanair, which unashamedly pitched itself as cheap and not very helpful and which is now |
| 0:49.1 | evolving its offer. I'm glad to say one of my guests is from Ryanair, but all three of them today |
| 0:54.4 | are from companies that have been in the sin bin for poor customer service, all recognise their |
| 0:59.6 | failings, all trying to improve on them. Let's meet my guests now. First, Kenny Jacobs from |
| 1:04.8 | Ryanair. He's the chief marketing officer there. And Kenny, just start by telling us how deliberate it was that Ryanair pitched itself |
| 1:14.7 | in its earlier incarnation as having really bad customer service. Because Michael O'Leary, Chief |
| 1:21.4 | Executive, made a joke of it, really, didn't he? One of the many jokes that Michael used to make |
| 1:26.6 | and still does make because they get us great headlines, which keeps us in the public's attention. I mean, Ryanair |
| 1:31.0 | was 30 years old last year and it really did start off as the good guy, the Robin Hood, if you |
| 1:35.5 | like, challenging EU bureaucracy, challenging the fact that to fly from Dublin to London |
| 1:40.6 | used to cost you over 300 Irish pounds at the time. 30 years later, Ryanair this |
| 1:45.8 | year will carry 105 million customers and it's become Europe's biggest airline. That's because |
| 1:50.8 | of a brutal focus on cost, a very, very stripped back efficient operating model that gives customers |
| 1:57.5 | the biggest thing they're looking for, which is low prices. Along the way, Ryanair, we missed a few things. |
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