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Cover story – Customer Service

14th Mar 2013 - 15:48
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Just over a year after introducing customer service programme eXperience, contract caterer Elior claims staff engagement, morale and the bottom line have all benefited. David Foad reports

In October 2011, Elior introduced eXperience, a concept based on ‘service champions’ that was designed to change the culture of the company and make the customer experience the focus of its operations.

Almost the entire 10,000-strong UK workforce has since become familiar with its simple, service-based mantras and the results are there for all to see, according to head of people development Michèle Moore, who led the roll out of one of the most comprehensive customer service training programmes in the industry.

“Customers get service with a smile, clients get reassurance that the whole experience reflects their ethos, high standards and care for the people that matter to them, staff get careers in an organisation that recognises their importance to the business and supports them, and suppliers get to work closely with an organisation that celebrates great food and drink and supports their contribution to sustainability and local sourcing,” said Moore.

“We now have an engaged workforce who put the customer at the heart of the operation to effectively meet their needs.”

And she has evidence to back up the good impressions. Staff turnover, which she believes can, in part, be attributed to the customer service strategy, is now 19%, a decrease of 3% from a year ago and a mightily impressive rate compared to the industry average of 40%. The effects are also being noted by clients and customers.

“The client at Waterstones in Liverpool told me that Joseph was fantastic during the service champion training sessions, had taken this back to site and they had already had two customers comment on the fantastic service,” claims Moore. “One actually said that the staff made the coffee shop the best in Liverpool.”

Elior is now offering its service champions an NVQ in customer service and more than 80 have taken up the offer.

Site managers surveyed within the first six months of the launch of the programme were already noticing results. A questionnaire showed that 79% reported a significant attitude change; 78% had seen better client relationships; 80% believed there was now more effective interaction with customers; and 99% said there was better teamwork on-site.

In addition, the latest round of Mystery Shoppers gave Elior sites a score of 86.1%.

 “We set ourselves a benchmark of 75% to achieve, so we ‘super-sized’ that,” said Moore. “But we did look at others and found the upper quartile measurement on the high street was 85%, so we felt we had done very well.”

Such customer satisfaction scores are by no means a purely academic exercise.

Adds Moore: “Mystery Shopper research has shown that happy customers are spending an average of £1.36 more than unhappy customers, so a great experience directly links to sales.”

The business case for company-wide customer service training is now obvious, but how did Elior decide this was the best strategy?

“We had already started the process of looking at customer service before Tim Hammond, the chief executive, joined in January 2011,” Moore explains. “His arrival accelerated and confirmed that this should be the strategy and it gave us a unique selling point.

“It was a case of looking around and there was no one really standing out in terms of customer service, so that was part of the thinking, that actually we could make a difference and stand out around the whole experience.”

First, a focus group of employees and managers defined Elior’s ‘eXperience standards’ that would ensure a great customer experience.

Training and communication materials were produced including flash cards to facilitate discussion around best practice and eXperience standards, a film showing how to deliver great service and credit-card-sized presenters summarising the programme.

It was first shown to 640 site managers at a roadshow to get their buy-in, then an initial 570 service champions from different sites were trained. In turn, these champions have facilitated 20 modules at their own sites.

Moore says the scheme has been rolled out across the whole company.

“There’s not a site in the land that doesn’t know about it,” she said. “We don’t keep exact figures, but about 9,000 of our 10,000 staff have been introduced to it.

“It’s deliberate that we don’t require a site to report back. We want it to be positioned as a conversation about service that we have on a regular basis. If we called it training it runs the risk of being something you just tick off and say ‘we’ve done that, what do we do next?’

“We want it to be a habit, a conversation that constantly reviews – ‘what have we done’ and ‘what’s gone well?’ The standards it introduces are now officially Elior standards – that’s what you’re measured on. But it isn’t us as senior managers telling employees what they should be doing; it’s them telling us what they do and what works well,” she adds.

“The simplest example is: make eye contact and smile. There’s also ‘how do you make a recommendation?’ It’s a conversation because we knew already we had lots of people doing a great job. Now it’s them sharing best practice and how best to do it.”

Moore said the 20 modules in the programme have now been completed, but that this is by no means the end of things.

“It’s continuous improvement. It’s about, ‘what do you want to do?’” she said. “Are there any areas where you review progress or identify areas that need work because they generated a low score, and how to revisit. Perhaps the customer journey has changed, so the question becomes, ‘what do we now need to do differently as a result?’

“The business is confident and reassured that it delivers and we have done a lot of work on it becoming a culture and talked about at every level. There’s a lot of focus and drive behind it. It is not just down to service champions, though; line managers have to buy into it and offer active support.”

Elior’s primary focus is on those buying food at the counters, but eXperience works for anyone who has contact with other people.

“It’s not just at food counters, it looks at any kind of interaction,” said Moore.

But how easy is it to get the feedback Elior needs to reliably evaluate experience?

“We do have customer satisfaction surveys – online or paper – but it is challenging because we have a very static base,” said Moore. “We try a lot of things because if you have a staff restaurant, then getting the same people to feed back regularly is difficult.”

In January 2012 a comprehensive customer satisfaction measurement tool – the first of its type in the market – was introduced to evaluate the success of the training and level of customer experience delivered on site.

It combines three elements delivered by customer satisfaction specialists Market Force: mystery shopper visits, online surveys and paper surveys.

Although common on the high street, Moore said that this type and scale of measurement has never been seen before in contract catering. Mystery shoppers visit sites on a monthly basis to evaluate the whole experience provided on-site and give feedback on the customer journey.

Among the measures undertaken by Elior is the incentivisation of on-site customers with prizes to provide feedback online. This can be done on a bespoke website or by scanning a quick response (QR) code and completing a questionnaire.

For sites such as care homes or schools, where online surveys are either not permitted or are impractical, paper-based surveys are used to gather feedback. Moore said the process was simple for sites to implement and manage to ensure the programme’s success and maximise feedback. But how does Elior quantify the benefits of eXperience?

“We see it in customer satisfaction surveys, in employee engagement, mini surveys, staff morale and teamwork,” she said. “We definitely feel it contributes to our high staff retention rate – they are developing their skills and they are getting opportunities to do a great job.

“It says ‘these are the standards’, but then allows you to add your personality. There’s no script. We encourage staff to make eye contact and smile, but we don’t tell them what to say; that’s up to each person and what they feel comfortable with.

“It’s about driving consistency. You should be able to walk into any Elior site and find the same standard of experience,” she says.

What do service champions say?

Carole Fudger, service champion at RNIB Peterborough, says: “Being a service champion has really increased my confidence and brought me out of myself. The training has helped me to explain and pass on to others how to make our customers happy.

“The experience programme encourages me and the team to take time to make our customers feel special. The customers are smiling back at us, we know most of their names and they appreciate it when we remember their likes and dislikes.

“It’s been great to get the feedback from them – they say I can’t leave because they’d miss me too much, which is a lovely feeling for me.

“We now work more closely as a team. At our regular meetings we are happy to give each other feedback, talk about our service and discuss how we can help our customers more,” Fudger continues. “Sales are up and customers are coming back and we’re gaining new ones.

“One of my customers said that I’m wonderful with the customers like her, remembering what they like and always with a smile, that’s why they come in, which makes me feel like we are appreciated here.”

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