Customer service

There are some essential differences between private and not-for-profit organisations. Although the situation is changing in relation to private businesses, not-for-profits are subject to much greater public scrutiny than the private sector.

Traditional approaches to cutting costs in public services won’t work.  We need to move to more rational, evidence-based approaches that keep the needs of public at their heart. 

Easier said than done?  It’s do-able given grit and determination…

A review of Upside Down Management – a Common Sense Guide to Better Business by John Timpson pub. Wiley £12.99 ISBN 978-0-470-68945-5

Transparency and 21st Century Customer Service

I dropped in to a packed house at the ICS Annual Conference and a question was asked of the panel asking whether the 'old' version of customer service was fit for the 21st century. No and it was not fit for the last century either.

Raving about your iPod? Desperate for your iPad? Feeling you have just too much iPud? The sexy product lives. The question is: why can't service be as sexy? Let us leave aside the oldest profession here – after all the feminists would argue that one of the worst things about prostitution is that it reduces the person to a product or sex machine. But rather than inducing feminist rage, the iPad is encouraging a lot of woman chortles - the iPad is already being dubbed iTampon.