UK retail customer service hit a 14-year low in 2024. But is the problem really about better recovery, or is it about prevention?

In this episode, I share a personal story about three trips to fix a basic mistake, then examine the £7.3 billion monthly cost of preventable service failures across UK retail.

We look at why UK employees spend 20% of their time fixing problems that shouldn't have happened, explore the real sources of service failures (it's not what you think), and examine two retailers who've figured out prevention: Sainsbury's with 5% voluntary turnover, and Timpson with their two-rule approach to customer service.

In this episode:

• Why brilliant service recovery still loses 50-70% of customers
• The turnover quality spiral nobody talks about
• Three patterns for preventing failures: systems design, measuring what matters, and technology that prevents
• How to redirect recovery spending toward prevention
• What Saturday afternoon looks like in prevention mode vs crisis mode

Key insight: When a customer encounters even one service problem, satisfaction drops 20 points. We've got brilliant at recovery, but recovery happens after the damage is done. The retailers seeing sustained improvement aren't getting better at fixing things. They're redesigning systems so things don't break in the first place.

Did anything resonate with you from today's conversation? I'd love to know, particularly where you're seeing preventable service failures in your own organisation.

Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/10

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