I am the customer: Charlene Wallace

“Keeping staff motivated is crucial to customer service”

Customer service is more or less the same across the board. Regardless of what industry you are serving, the same rules apply to getting it right and wrong.
I’ve just joined the water industry, having spent years working for an airline. At first glance, that may not seem like a simple transition. But the reality is that customer expectations are almost universally the same.
Naturally, the specific issues at hand are different. For Business Stream, the most common customer enquiries relate to vacated properties, billing issues and shared supply arrangements. But how you deal with these issues, the values you hold and the level of service that you aspire to deliver remain the same, whatever the product or service.
That means constantly looking for ways we can make a customer’s journey as seamless and consistent as possible, delivering  the high standards they expect throughout. The customer wants to know you are thinking about them as an individual and not just coming up with blanket solutions to vastly different problems.
Keeping staff motivated is crucial to fostering a culture that supports this. That means celebrating the success of a job well done, ensuring everyone is engaged with the industry and creating access to training and personal development opportunities for staff.
At the end of the day, customers of all stripes just want their issues resolved. And if you get that right, they might just tell someone they know.