As part and parcel of being CEO of a membership organisation, I am often invited to speak at events and boardrooms, which I always enjoy and see as a great privilege! As I travel, I get to experience a wide range of customer experiences, and of course, I get to sit in many different reception areas.
I’m always interested in the experience receptionists and other frontline support staff create. It may only be a few minutes, but it can tell you a lot about the organisation, the culture, and the focus and priorities the board set.
The best reception staff are able to assess quickly how you are feeling by how you appear: calm, rested, anxious, running late, etc, and the good ones make you feel welcome straight away. They will attend to the basics, asking about your journey, ensuring you have what you need, dealing with luggage and refreshments, but they see and feel a lot more – and the good ones ensure you feel connected to the brand they represent and immediately welcome.
Sadly, this isn’t always the case, and sometimes as a visitor you feel like an inconvenience to be tolerated.
The best leaders recognise and pay attention to this. They understand the power of first impressions and making an emotional, human connection.
This National Customer Service Week, one of our themes was leadership in challenging times, providing an opportunity to reflect on what good leadership looks like during periods of sustained pressure. This is something the PM’s recent conference speech touched on, stressing the value of honesty about difficult choices. Ahead of the Budget, business leaders will recognise the challenge facing the Prime Minister – how best to maintain and convey confidence while being clear about what can realistically be delivered. And I am glad to see he has made frontline service delivery a core theme of his government, with an emphasis on public service provision being reoriented to meet local needs.
Culture is revealed at the first point of contact
A healthy service culture depends on frontline staff having the trust and authority to respond effectively to customers and to relay lessons to leadership teams and vice versa.
High-performing environments empower colleagues to take initiative to solve problems. Part of this is being clear about expectations. But it also means not just listening to frontline colleagues about what they are seeing on the ground – but observing what is really going on: recurring complaints, processes that are impacting the customer journey – and then acting on it. People who feel trusted and heard will go the extra mile. People who don’t understand the value of service, the importance leadership places on it, and their role in it can end up making a visitor feel like an inconvenience.
As National Customer Service Week draws to a close, there are four things I would like all leaders to consider:
- Is your brand and how you and your executive show up for your people genuinely customer-focused?
- Are we obsessing about the wrong things – when we should be focusing on purpose, connection and building long-term business opportunities?
- As a leader, have you observed and thanked a team member for something they have done that has really made a difference this week?
- And when we are deploying AI, are we doing so with the right intent? Are we clear about the outcome we desire, and the parameters within which we want it to operate? The human holds the moral compass, and it is up to us to ensure we use it to direct our actions, whether deployed using technology or by our colleagues.
And finally, I have a challenge for you: the next time you walk into your own reception, or spend time with your frontline colleagues, ask yourself what a visitor would learn about your organisation in those first few minutes – and is this the first impression you want them to have?
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