Leasing: Investment in service = upturn in sales

Moran on mergers

Moran’s husband works for Zenith, which was acquired by HG Capital earlier this year, so she is no stranger to the subject of mergers and acquisitions.

She believes companies going through a merger need to make an employee “the champion of the customer”.

“Someone who has the authority in meetings to say ‘hang on a minute, how will it feel for our customers? What will customers be thinking?’.”

Companies could also seek the views of two or three long-standing customers.

“Invite them in and say ‘what is the chatter out there and how are you feeling?’, rather than guessing and assuming. Customers love to be part of identifying the problem and sometimes solving the problem.”

Above all, be honest with customers.

“When you’re trying to merge and integrate back office functions and systems, things do go wrong and being honest is far better than trying to pretend everything is always going perfectly well.”

Customer experience isn’t a one size fits all

Customer experience is made up of three elements: product, environment and service (see diagram).

“Those three circles aren’t always the same size for every customer,” says Moran. “If you’re a customer in one of our London food stores at lunch time the most important thing to you is the product and availability. You’re not really bothered about smiley, happy friendly service. You want to get through the till.

“Customer experience isn’t a one size fits all, definitely not for every customer and not even for the same customer because depending on their shopping mission and the time of day and the type of mood they’re in, those circles are all different sizes and that makes it more challenging.”

Social Media

The role of social media in customer service will grow and grow, according to Moran.

Marks & Spencer’s social media team has already increased from two or three people to eight.

“We use social media heavily from a marketing perspective to attract customers to the brand,” Moran says.

Competitions have proved successful.

To coincide with Mark & Spencer’s last Christmas TV advertising campaign, people were asked to name the dog which appeared in the advert.

“We asked ‘should we call him Magic or Sparkle?’ and we had 14 million hits,” Moran says.

“We run competitions on a consistent basis. Percy Pig famously met his wife Penny – and her name – all through social media.

“We also ask customers to give us feedback: ‘these are our top 10 spring coats, which ones do you like best?’ You get customers involved in the process.”

As well as using Facebook and Twitter for marketing, Moran’s team monitors sites for customer questions or comment.

“We’ve learnt a few painful lessons that you have to have a very different type of response,” Moran says. “Corporate responses don’t go down well.”

She suggests that some companies, particularly in America, are starting to “be more pushy back with customers” when they make unreasonable complaints through social media.

“I do think the shift will start to come that just because you shout loud to two million followers doesn’t mean you’re always going to get your own way,” she says.

Growth of online

Marks & Spencer’s stores still account for 90% of sales but online is growing.

“We’re about turn £800million online this year and four years ago that was £500million so the growth has been exponential,” Moran says. “But we’re finding more and more that people will go online and do their research but then they want to go in store and have the experience of talking to the assistants.”

In recognition of the time customers spend browsing the web, Marks & Spencer has launched a new website after a three-year programme of investment and development.

By 2020 Moran expects 85% of sales to be in-store only with customers that shop across both channels increasing to 25%.

The future of customer service

Over the past 12 to 18 months the idea that “customer service is a key differentiator” has been growing rapidly, according to Moran.

“There are more and more organisations investing in people to lead it,” she says. “I think the next big challenge is around how do we ensure that we really deliver across all sectors and all industries the right skill base to support what I think will be a growing industry?

“How do we encourage people to recognise that being in service is a good career?

“In the States, being in the service economy is seen as a good job whereas in the UK it’s seen a bit as service servitude, dealing with complaints.”

Could there be a shift in attitudes in the future?

“I’d die a happy girl if we got there,” Moran smiles.