There is never a good time for a business’s systems to go down, but outages at a major bank last week proved particularly unfortunate timing. With customers on the lookout for Black Friday deals ahead of the festive season – or just…
Black Friday marks the start of one of the busiest, and potentially profitable, trading periods of the year for retailers. But this year, as the sales launch once more, it’s impossible to ignore that customer service is under more pressure…
The Institute of Customer Service's UK Customer Service Index results featured in a Telegraph article discussing challenges faces by customers when service staff are working from home.
This week, I was asked by The Grocer to give some thought to the part that M&S’s renewed focus on the customer experience has played in its recent success. A week on from M&S's return to the FTSE 100, it is interesting…
This past week we saw an all-too familiar story in the UK headlines – a weekend of disruption, confusion, and ‘chaos’ for holidaymakers and travellers alike due to an air traffic control issue across the country. Following a spring and…
We are just three weeks into the start of Consumer Duty, the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) new powers to set higher and clearer standards of consumer protection. But if firms thought they’d get a summer grace period with the new…
For many, the banking crisis of 2007-8 hit home the hardest when high street stores began to disappear. A perfect storm of rising costs, the growth of online shopping and dwindling footfall has seen many of our nation’s high streets…
It’s been a busy couple of weeks since our latest UK Customer Satisfaction Index was published, showing the sharpest drop in customer satisfaction since 2008 – and the worst score on the index since 2015. We should have perhaps expected some of…
At the moment, businesses seem to be in the news for all the wrong reasons. Retail banks are just the latest to face backlash from regulators and customers, with supermarkets and utility companies having faced similar criticism in recent weeks…
The papers would have us believe the economy is on a razor’s edge, with every issue of economic figures scrutinised for signs we’re either in or out of a recession. This week’s economic output figures from the ONS were no…