Institute of Customer Service Annual Conference and Virgin reveals interesting staff profiling technique

I was intrigued to learn that the Institute of Customer Service (ICS) began their annual conference today – billed as “the UK’s largest gathering of customer service opinion formers, academics and professionals, so it’s a must for anyone with a strategic interest in customer service.”

It is being held at “The Brewery” in London and, all the organisation for delegates and accommodation has been arranged by Creme Conferences – now there is pressure on staff to realise “outstanding” customer satisfaction! Creme Conferences have the company motto – “passionate about venue finding” whilst The Brewery lists among its many awards AEO Team of the Year “The accolade recognizes high customer service levels, duty of care and the enthusiasm and dedication of the Brewery’s staff. Judges commented particularly on impressive low levels of staff turnover, high levels of repeat clients and the likelihood of clients to recommend the venue.” I am certain that their experience will be drawn on this week!

Roger Martin-Fagg opened the conference with a presentation on the UK’s rather poorly economy and one of his predictions was “companies can no longer rely on the health of the economy as a whole to make profits. You’ll have to be better than your competitors. Customer service will be a major differentiator between companies.”   This makes customer service training more important and vital than ever before.

Interesting then that he was followed on stage by Julie Southern (chief commercial and finance officer at Virgin Atlantic) – who was sharing how Virgin Atlantic had coped with the downturn in the economy and what they have offered in terms of customer service (given the current situation, I imagine not having their cabin crew on strike is a start! ed.).

There were some tangible things, possibly driven by customer feedback – “giving customers more leg room by altering the plane layout” – from a cynical point of view – if you have less customers, you have more room! I was however delighted to see that they “make sure staff were treated as well as possible. Virgin Atlantic deals with both staff committees and unions, and the vast majority of redundancies were voluntary. The company also initiated an Everyday heroes programme that rewards all staff who provide excellent service.”

The real worm on the hook for me though was what Julie revealed during her Q&A session on how they determine whether or not someone has the ‘right Virgin attitude’ – what sort of person ‘fits’ their ethos. Virgin do this by analysing the backgrounds of their ‘best staff members’ – interestingly, they’ve found that the children of divorced parents tend to have an excellent attitude for customer service jobs. WOW! what a statement that is. I can imagine school careers advisors and indeed school counsellors all over the country plugging that silver lining to a distraught child!

It has long been known that psychometric testing has a place in recruitment and Myers Briggsâ„¢ has proven through it’s sheer longevity to be an excellent tool for analysing how someone ‘ticks’ professionally – I can’t imagine how Virgin Atlantic will engineer their competency based interviewing techniques round to determining an applicant’s family tree! Surely somewhere in all this analysis of what makes a great customer service agent we, as a professional society may have lost sight of the human factor – which is indeed what we all like in good customer relations.

I do take heart in the fact that Virgin Atlantic (who are undoubtedly ambassadors for great customer service) talk about the ‘right Virgin attitude’. I also find it fascinating how The Brewery have a low turnover of staff. As employers, companies need to provide excellent service to their staff too. We all know that it is sometimes the simplest gesture that encourages loyalty. Perhaps staff reflect the ethos of how they are served by their employers. I will certainly keep tuned into the ICS blog this week as they report on the various speakers and activities they have planned.