Customer service is most often thought about in the context of large corporate call centres many of whom provide excellent service (Amazon and first direct are often held up as prime examples), but equally with some well known cases who provide appalling service to their customers with long waiting queues, tortuous telephone menus and dreadful operatives (it’s probably best not to name the guilty here). Significant research and practical experience have gone into understanding best practice for customer service.
Membership organisations are, by their very nature, organisations that provide services for their members (and potentially other customers). Providing the best possible service experience is something that is not often considered, but is of great importance to help to ensure that members renew their membership and that the services can be provided cost effectively.
John Seddon
Professor John Seddon is the author of the best-selling Freedom from Command and Control, John has a reputation for being controversial, but informed. Whilst his main body of work studies the knock on effects of inefficiencies at the transactional edge of Service Organisations, his more recent work focuses on Public Services with even more compelling arguments.
John Seddon is a well-known "management guru", and bestselling author. John acknowledges the influence of W.E Deming and Taiichi Ohno on his work and today he describes what his consultancy firm, Vanguard, does as a combination of systems thinking – ‘how work works’, and intervention theory – ‘how to change it’.