Our work involved developing and analysing a paper based questionnaire for people living within an individual Council area.  We were very pleased with the 29% response rate – we’d normally expect around 16% for this sort of study.  The questionnaire collected both quantitative and qualitative data and our experience is that the vast majority of people who answer do the quantitative questions and gloss over the qualitative ones.  Unusually, nearly 50% of respondents had included lengthy comments in response to the qualitative questions and 90% of these people had included comments on the same issue – the funding of care.

Why do we think this is?  We think the answer is simple – people were angry that a decades old promise was being broken further.

Since the 1940s, people have believed that paying their National Insurance will entitle them to free health care, free social care, an old age pension and other benefits (like a basic income should they become unemployed).  Over a period of time, the benefits people are entitled to have been eroded.  Dental services and prescription medication have not been free of charge for most adults of working age for many years and social care authorities have also been able to charge a contribution towards the cost of care in recent decades.

However, people are now waking up to the fact that advances in medical science and improved standards of living, combined with the ‘baby boom’ mean that we already have more people aged over 65 than we do aged under 18.  On average, people are living 12 years longer now than they did 60 years ago.  The balance in numbers between people of working age and older people is set to get worse before it gets better, even with a recognition that the standard retirement age is going to increase (when I started work in 1990 I expected to be taking early retirement at the age of 55, I now think I’ll be working until I’m 70).

This all means that there are huge challenges about the way that people’s care needs are funded – especially older people.

Older people who believed that their National Insurance contributions would mean they were well looked after in their older age are getting angry.  Even people who have earned modest incomes are being forced to contribute to their care costs – savings and assets are taken into account.  Someone who has been frugal and paid off the mortgage on their house, or someone who has inherited the 2 bedroom family terraced home is finding that the value of their home is taken into account and this means that they have to pay towards the cost of their care.  People who have been careful with their money feel angry because they’re being expected to pay for care that someone in the next street who lives in a rented house and has spent all their money is getting for free.

Now the Government is looking at funding options for the future that mean that people with modest means are likely to have to contribute more to the cost of their care and support.  It is describing the new funding system as a “Fair Funding System” – but the people it’s most likely to affect see it as anything but fair.

During the course of this consultation the current governing Political Party announced free care for older people if they win the next General Election.  When you look at their announcement, their promise seems to come with quite a few strings attached.  It appears that it only covers ‘personal care’ (whatever that might mean), for people living in their own homes (not people in residential accommodation) who have the very highest level of care and support needs (people who are assessed as having Critical Needs under the Fairer Access to Care Services criteria).  That’s not quite the ‘free care for all who need it’ message that many people believe was said.

The peasants may revolt – all because of the way they have been allowed to believe that a promise meant something that the organisation that made the promise is unable or unwilling to deliver.

The lesson for anyone selling products or services: Make sure you can deliver what you promise and keep it unambiguous.  A  ‘miracle’ promise (or one that can be misinterpreted) may make you look good in the short term but is likely to cause long term problems.

Unlike just about everyone in the audience, I didn’t know any of their material.  I went as a guest of a friend who knows them well and wanted to hear them live.

Everyone there seemed to enjoy themselves and there was much singing along to the choruses in their well known songs.  They all had a great experience.

However, I was less happy.  At the end of the night, I was frustrated – I hadn’t been able to understand the lyrics for a single song beause the sound was so badly mixed in the main auditorium that I couldn’t hear the words.  I was further frustrated because I could see people playing instruments on stage (particularly the guy on latin percussion) but could not actually hear their efforts reflected in the sound projected to me.  I was in the middle of the auditorium, about 1/3 of the way back.

As a trained musician, I was so frustrated – I caught glipses of the brilliant performance that was happening on stage but it felt like their sound engineer either didn’t know their studio sound or didn’t at spend time in the auditorium during their sound check to listen to the balance.  The whole mix felt like it was aiming for impact rather than balance.

I have listened to their CDs since and these have a beautifully balanced sound and crisp, clear lyrics.

What can a good business learn from this?

Well it suggested to me that if you have a well known product, standards can slip and your loyal customers probably won’t notice but an outsider with knowledge of your product (maybe your competition) probably will.  Just because people are still buying it and seem happy, this doesn’t mean that it’s time to relax.  It’s probably time to make an extra effort to be self-critical and drive for improvement.

Dealer no. 1

Dealer: “Hi Stan, how’s your car going?  Everything still OK with it?”

Us: “Hi there J, yes it’s great thanks.  We’re looking at another lease car and hope you can help us”

Short discussion of what we’re looking for.

Dealer: “We’ve got a 2nd hand one of those on the forecourt – it’s 3 years old so doesn’t have the latest, quieter version of the engine in but it’ll give you a good idea of what they’re like to drive.  I’ll just get the keys then you can take it out for a drive.”

Forty minute unsupervised test drive follows.  We return to the dealership and the person we spoke to is busy with another customer so someone else comes up to us.

Dealer: “I’m sorry but J is busy right now.  Was the test drive OK?  Can I help you with anything?”

Short but useful discussion and we leave with all the information we need.

OK we know this dealership as we already have a lease car from them but their treatment of us was very similar the first time when we went to look for that car a year ago.  The first time, it took them longer to get the the point of assessing whether they could trust us with an unsupervised test drive but it was basically the same.

Dealer 2

We’re not greeted by anyone as we walk in, in fact one sales person glances up from his desk and decides to ignore us.  We go to the reception desk and explain that we’d like to talk to someone about a car on business lease.

The receptionist takes us over to the person who ignored us on the way in.  We tell him what we’re looking for, he asks all sorts of questions about the business and what we do before asking us how much money we want to spend.  We’ve already told him the exact model and specification of car we want – does he seriously think that if we can give him precise model details with extras and not look at any notes that we have done no research about cost?

He offers us a (very poor quality considering the status of the car brand) coffee while he goes away and calculates a lease price.  At this point we’ve not seen the car in the flesh (there isn’t one in the showroom and we haven’t been offered the chance to look at one outside).  He comes back after a long wait and gives us a quote which is £160 + VAT more per month than the online quote we have already had.

He asks us what we think and we say that we’re not prepared to make any sort of decision until we’ve had a test drive.

Dealer: “Well we don’t have one of those in stock, we’re going to have to borrow one from another dealership”

Us: “That’s fine, we appreciate that you can’t have everything in stock.  We’re happy to book a time to come back and test drive one.”

Dealer: “Well it won’t be this week because I’m going on holiday tomorrow.”

Us: “That’s OK.  How about when you get back?”

Dealer: “I’ll be back next weekend so I’ll probably phone you about Wednesday during the following week.”

Us: “That’s fine.  We look forward to your call.”

Three weeks passed and we’d heard nothing from the dealer.  Then suddenly my mobile phone rings on a Friday fternoon.

Dealer: “Hello, is that Stan?  It’s M from the A garage.”

Me: “No actually it’s Pete and it’s me you need to speak to.  Stan’s one of our Directors but the car is for me.”

Dealer: [short pause] “OK.  Have you any news for me?  Have you made a decision?”

Me: “No.  I’m actually waiting for you to phone me to tell me when we can have a test drive.”

Dealer: “Is the price a problem?”

Me: “To be honest, we’re still waiting for the test drive before we make a decision but at the moment we’re really not impressed with your customer service.  I know that we’re know at the V garage but even the first time we went there we had a much more welcoming reception.  The way we’re treated as customers is important to us and that’s swinging in their favour at the moment.”

Dealer: [silence]

Me: “Thanks for your call but you’re clearly not interested in us as customers.  I’m fairly certain that if we do go for the car we came to talk to you about, we’ll not be buying it from you or bringing it in to you for servicing.  I hope you have more success with another customer.”

I found it really hard to find a professional way to end this call.  The salesman had never made us to feel welcome at any point, he had not arranged the test drive that he had promised, he had no apology to make and he didn’t even react when I said that we were not happy with the service he was offering.  A car is a big investment – we were looking to lease a vehicle with a retail value of approximately £22,000.  When I discussed this experience with my colleagues we were all in agreement – we are not going to use that dealership for any future business and we feel that we need to think twice about buying the product they sell from any other dealership.

This was the second time in 15 months we had that experience at that dealership.  The previous time we hadn’t even got as far as getting a quote.  We walked out because we had been in the dealership for 20 minutes, looking at cars and not a single member of staff had approached us to ask if they could help.  If a manufacturer or supplier is willing to let their agent consistently ignore potential customers or treat them without appropriate respect – especially when their brand is perceived as premium quality in their market sector – do they really deserve to be taken seriously by their customers?

We visited this dealership on the same day that we visited the first one – wearing the same clothes.  It was a nice weekend so this means jeans, a decent T-shirt and a jacket.  Granted this is not everyday business wear but it was a weekend and we did make it clear from our first sentence that we were looking for a business lease.

Dealer 3

This visit was made two weeks later on a Sunday lunchtime.  I was dressed the same and had our young trainee with me as he’s always looking to gain different business experiences and we thought it might be interesting for him.

Dealer: “Hello there.  Can I help you at all?”

Me: “Hello.  Yes – we’re looking for a car on business lease.”

We had a brief discussion about the car I wanted.

Dealer: “We’ve got one of those on the forecourt.  It’s an ex demonstrater, I’ll just get the keys so you can have a look at it.”

He brings the keys out to us and we have a good look around.  We’re impressed – it seems to do everything we need and is significantly cheaper than the other two optoins.

Me: “That looks great but I’d want a colleague to have a look at it and for us both to test drive it.”

Dealer: “That’s fine.  Do you want to come back inside?  I can take some basic details from you and we can fix an appointment for a test drive.”

We go back inside and discuss approximate specifications.  The dealer agrees with our reasoning for picking the engine we want – he knows the roads I drive regularly and knows that some of the less powerful models will struggle if they’re fully laden.  Ten minutes later we have a test drive booked for the following weekend.

In the middle of the week I get a text message from the dealer to say that the ex demonstrater we were going to test drive has been sold but he has a similar car with the same engine in it which will be available.  The message asks us to contact him if this isn’t OK.  So far as I’m concerned, it’s perfectly fine.

We turned up the next week for the test drive.  The dealer recognises me straight away.

Dealer:”Hello there.  I hope you’re well.  You may have noticed the blue car outside when you arrived.  It’s all ready for us to take out.  It’s a bit low on fuel so I’ll drive it to the petrol station then you can take over, if that’s OK.”

Me: “Great thanks.  This is Stan, one of our Directors.”

Dealer: “Hello Stan.  Do you want to drive it too?  There’s plenty of time for you both to try it out.”

We drive to the fuel station and the dealer puts some fuel in.  He suggests one of us gets in the driver’s seat while he pays for the fuel.

Dealer: “Do you have any particular types of roads you want to try out?  I have a few routes I normally take people on depending on whether they want town traffic, hills and coutry roads or motorways.”

Test drive goes as planned for about 40 minutes with the two of us both having a drive.  We get back to the dealership and start to discuss specifications, prices etc.  Another 30 minutes later we leave, having had a pleasant experience, feeling that we’ve been valued, respected and listened to.  We’re intending to go back next week to place our order and having discussed the merits of various options with the dealer, we’re actually going to be getting a slightly lower specification than we had anticipated – saving a little money but getting all the essentials we need.

This third dealership had never seen us before but gave us a fantastic level of service.

Unlike the other two dealers, they are not selling a prestige brand but they are still selling good quality cars.  It is no surprise to me that they have been rated in the top 5 of all car manufacturers for customer satisfaction for the last 13 consecutive years.

So what does this tell us that’s of interest to Thirkettle Associates clients?

As a customer making a significant investment in something that needs to last us several years, the quality of the product was only one factor in our decision making process. The questions that we have asked ourselves whilst making this decision have been:

• Do we think the product meet our needs?
• Has the supplier listened to our needs and given us helpful advice?
• Has the supplier made us feel like he values us as customers and shown that he understands that this is potentially a long term business relationship?
• Is the price reasonable and affordable?
• If anything goes wrong, what faith do we have in the supplier to act on our behalf in order to get it rectified?

If you’re in the business of sales and want to build up long term, profitable relationships with your customers, why not take a step back and ask yourselves what you think your customers’ answers to these questions are?  Why not ask your customers what they think?

At Thirkettle Associates, we have a lot of experience of assessing customer satisfaction – using a range of techniques including questionnaires and focus groups.  Why not contact us if you want help with this?

Pete Denton – Founder and Principal Associate

We are a small, people focused consultancy whose motto is Putting people at the heart of your organisation.

At Thirkettle Associates we have many years’ experience working at the interface between people and organisations.  The tools and techniques we have developed are tried and tested and can help you to improve your organisation in whichever area you feel that you need to get close to people – as customers or employees.  Our work is about helping small and medium sized organisations to make the most of tools and techniques that have been used successfully in many large organisations across the globe.

This blog will include our reflections on real world situations where we have observed organisations either failing to recognise that people are important, or demonstrating good practice.  Each post will identify lessons that other organisations may use to learn from our experiences.

I hope you enoy what we write.

Thanks for reading.

Pete Denton – Founder and Principal Associate.