I was invited to attend to opening of Duncan Bannatyne’s new spa in Edinburgh last week (I know the manager and was making up the numbers).  I just happened to be getting my tour as Duncan arrived.  The first thing he did was ask to buy a voucher for the spa - he really did pay for it.  I watched with interested as he studied the process, and then made suggestions to his health club managing director as to how it should be improved.

Later in the evening I was speaking to Duncan’s wife, Joanne, and I asked her about the earlier voucher purchase.  She explained that as Duncan visited his businesses he made a point of testing out the core processes to see if they worked.  She claimed that was one of his key principles for maintaining service standards and keeping cost low.  I was also interested, given that he is group chief executive, how he had the time do study his businesses in this manner.  Joanne explained that though he was busy, Duncan wanted to find a way of keeping in touch with the customer and this was his way of doing it.  The moral of this story is simple: if Duncan has time to do it then so do you. 

So here’s the idea, for the next hour become a customer of your own organisation.  Go to your website and try to buy a product, call your contact centre and try to arrange a service, call your IVR and see what happens.  Go on I dare you to try. Let me know what you find via the make a comment section and I will arrange for the best one to get a voucher for the use of a Bannatyne’s or other spa near you.  The voucher will include use of the facilities and a facial (even if you are a man). 

This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 8:31 am and is filed under Uncategorized . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.