The chirpy ‘have a good day’ US approach to service is regularly praised – not just in comparison to a sulky experience in the UK but to most other countries’ service cultures. As a born and bred American I always feel the need to point out that all those smiles disappear once you get off Main Street and try to claim your health insurance or try to claw your way through the impenetrable public sector wit distinctly charmless automated answering systems. By contrast, I’ve had very rewarding conversations here with the DVLA, the Revenue and the Immigration authorities.
Nevertheless, everyone has their story, their prejudice and their generalisation but the most useful way to think about this is to look at the business model. In a fascinating talk at recent Marketing Society Business Leaders dinner, Anthony Thompson, of the newly launched Metro Bank, elaborated on what makes good service. We all know it when we experience it but his point is that it rarely works as a bolt on – as most companies try to do. It shouldn’t just a feature of the business model. It should be THE basic business model. Here’s what he told us about Metro.
Firstly they are called stores not branches. Indeed, Metro doesn’t think of itself as a bank in the conventional sense; it is a store that retails money. Therefore it has more in common with Mary Portas, scourge of bad service in the retail fashion trade than it has with NatWest or Lloyds or Barclays. Staff recruitment is fundamental and the most important requirement is that applicants smile and demonstrate they truly want to serve. Thousands of applicants were sifted through to find 90 new staff. Skills can be taught, attitude can’t.
So what are the services and at what price? Anthony and Vernon Hill – who spoke at last year’s conference – completely reject with prevailing conventional bank wisdom in Britain: that price is paramount. Nonsense. Service is paramount and they are setting out to prove it. So Metro isn’t the cheapest. But what it offers customers who wish to conduct their business in person (of which there are more than we of the online/telephone community might think)is not just helpfulness and empathy in the store but details like dog friendliness, toilets, changing facilities for mothers with infants, and opening hours similar to the major supermarkets as well as opening on Saturday.
They are putting on customers at the rate of 1000 a week to their 8 stores (with plans to build more in the London area) with Metro’s appeal spread by word of mouth.
So the next time you’re ignored, insulted, left waiting or given wrong information, spare a thought for the poor sod who like too many of his countrymen and women, is not naturally sulky, surly, stupid or slow but hopelessly trapped in a broken business model.