The true meaning of customer service

We take a lot of things for granted in business, but perhaps the most sinful is a belief that saying 'excellent' or 'unique customer service' often enough, will make it a reality.

The problem is that nowadays pretty much every company purports to have fantastic customer service. Well of course they would, it's often one of the only ways to provide a differentiator between your business and the nearest competitor's.

But because of the ease of this claim it often only leads to scepticism from the consumer. The effect of which is that the companies who speak of great customer service, but fail to deliver, simply denigrate the hard work of those that keep their promise.

So far so obvious, but it wasn't until I was on site at The Bigger Printing Company this week, that the value of customer service really hit me.

Bigger Printing is a small Cheltenham-based company that delivers quite exceptional large format print. I say exceptional not just because Bigger Printing is a client and I feel I should, but because I genuinely believe it from the work that I've seen. That includes a particularly well made pop-up display that the company produced for one of our other clients.

But of course what made that print and others like it so special, was not just that it looked great, that it used the latest technology and other such things, but because it was produced by people who genuinely care about the standard of their work. By people, perhaps by virtue of being a smaller business, who deliver an incredibly personal and spot on level of service.

I realised the extent of this truism about Bigger Printing, while providing some background to 2nd Head's technical consultant, Justin Atkins, about the business. Justin is currently helping us thrash out the finer points of implementing a new CRM (supplier name withheld...). To set the scene he requested a brief overview of business strategy and the drivers that brought us to the implementation of a new system.

So the company's director, Seb Stanley, and I set about giving as true an idea of the business as we could: growth plans, 5 year objectives etc. All the belt and braces stuff that us consultants like to know before we start interfering in your affairs.

However Justin was particularly keen to understand the ethos of the business, the reasons why Seb Stanley had invested in large format print and all the little bits and pieces that helped him to grasp the day to day running of the business. So stats and jargon aside, we had to give a fair picture of what Bigger Printing was all about.

And once we got going this actually proved to be a relatively straightforward task. Seb led this discussion, but it was easy for me to interject with my own knowledge about what the business stands for. Seb loves the scope and creativity of large format print, so he wanted a business that would give him full reign to express that. He is quite simply a very passionate man, who brings that to every aspect of the business.

I know this from the many many conversations we've had - usually between site visits as he calls me from his mobile (hands free of course) - when more often than not he's incredibly excited about how fabulous the latest installation looks and just had to call to tell me. Usually followed by a request for a case study or a press announcement, of course, but he knows he's done good and there'll be no problem in securing some coverage.

When I speak to Bigger Printing's customers the conversation usually goes something like this: 'Loved the display/banner/ building sign (edit as you will), love the service, can't wait to work with them again.' It's almost to the point where words fail me at the copy writing stage. How can I possibility write exactly the same words again?

Now what I'm coming to, if you hadn't already guessed, is that Bigger Printing knows how to do wonderful customer service. It makes me happy, because it's easy to stack up the endorsements, but equally it infuriates me that other companies can claim to do something similar. Because most of them can't.

I know this as a marketer who has dealt with countless suppliers and cold callers and I know it as a consumer. So a little plea from me: don't do the good guys a disservice. If you say you offer great customer service then make sure that you do. I'm watching you...