For weeks, the chatter around Wednesday’s budget has been hard to avoid. Now that the Chancellor’s speech has passed, businesses have an opportunity to reflect and refocus.
The measures set out this week, some more welcome than others, will impact both consumers and businesses. Wage costs are on the rise again, while new taxes, such as on alcohol, will place a heavier burden on several sectors – retail and hospitality in particular. And the business rate reforms announced for these sectors, while notable, are unlikely to provide a quick fix.
This won’t be an easy period for any business. Equally, it is crucial that we aren’t bogged down by short-termism.
This is especially true for those of us committed to the customer experience. Our purpose remains the same: to enhance satisfaction through excellent service and restore confidence among consumers.
Refocusing for the long term
The priorities for service-driven organisations were always unlikely to change, regardless of what the Chancellor announced this week. As the dust settles on the outcomes, three things stand out to me for businesses determined to refocus and reinvigorate their journey towards growth.
First, leadership should remain service-led. As leaders, we are responsible for setting a clear direction for our people and organisation. By shaping this through a service lens, we can embed a culture that ensures customer outcomes inform decision making, strengthening consumer confidence and laying the foundations for long-term success.
Linked to this, continuing to invest in our people is equally important. As the ones often directly responsible for delivering an excellent customer experience, ensuring our staff are well-trained and feel valued by their organisation is business-critical. Not just in terms of encouraging the discretionary effort essential to great service, but so that they’re equipped to deal with evolving customer demands in a busier and tech-enabled world.
This brings me to the third priority: artificial intelligence. AI is evolving rapidly, yet so many recent experiments and deployments have fallen short of their promised return on investment.
This should be proof enough that we must think carefully, today, about how AI can become a genuine enabler for staff and of smoother operations, how data is stored and used to optimise processes, and how the customer experience fits into that in the future.
Underpinning these three areas of focus, we must always ensure we can demonstrate the return on investment of the service agenda – something our ROI toolkit is designed to support.
Growth remains our end goal
After this week’s budget, many businesses will feel a rise in costs; in some cases, the impact of this will be deferred until 2027, when a number of the changes announced will come into effect. Just as consumers may experience a pinch in their pockets right now, there is a potential future hit to their confidence to spend and save. In reality, it’s not the Budget that’s going to drive business and economic performance. Rather, it is the way we respond that will make the difference.
The goal for organisations remains the same: to drive business performance and economic growth. To do so, acting with urgency and doubling down on service will be key.
In our most recent UK Customer Satisfaction Index, we saw an uptick in customer satisfaction, which puts us on a firmer footing. As we move into the new year, it will be interesting to see how businesses have fared in building on this momentum come January’s Index.
Within this, we are introducing some new data tracking the relationship between satisfaction and consumer sentiment, which will provide valuable insights for our members in the future.
For now, though, we know that continuing to improve service quality and satisfaction levels is what will enable us to rebuild trust with our customers, encourage consumer spending and thoughtful business investment, and drive the economy upwards. This is where we must focus our efforts.
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