Customer service has become a huge money earner for consultants and providers of training programmes. They sell their services to companies to try and help them to become excellent in this area because they recognise that it can give them competitive advantage. It is fashionable for companies to have ‘customer orientation’ or something similar as one of their values. Slick and efficient processes are an important part of providing great customer service. But there is something else. Something much more fundamental: it is trust.

I recently wrote to my mortgage provider with a complaint. I received no reply. When I telephoned them I was told that they did not receive my letter and that I should be complaining to their associate company anyway. I called the associate company, they said that they were not responsible and that I was right to direct my complaint to the first company. All in all I made ten phone calls and wrote four letters. Each time I spoke to someone they said they would call me back. Only one of them did. After the first couple of calls I did not believe any of the commitments that any of their customer service people gave me. Even their customer complaints department took two months to respond to my letter.

Have you ever had this kind of experience, where you have no confidence in their promises to call back or the information they are giving you? I find it astounding that big-name, well established, profitable companies cannot even get these basics right. I imagine that it is not because they do not think that building a trusting relationship with their customers is important.

In contrast, my bank, First Direct, recently sent me a text message asking me to call them urgently. They were checking my whereabouts because my debit card was being used in Italy that day. I was in Portsmouth! Their service was fast, courteous and efficient. From the very first phone call I believed that they would do what they said they would do.

My experience of customer service of the standard that I experienced from First Direct is so rare that when I come across companies that provide good service I am surprised. I don’t think that I am any more demanding than most consumers. I wonder how difficult it is to provide a service that meets such a basic need. And it is still such a rarity that the good ones are noticeable. They don’t even have to be excellent to stand out.

Customer relationships based on trust are even more important than ever in today’s highly competitive and changing environment. Building a firm base of trust and confidence in brands’ products and service is the key to success in the three dominant areas of rivalry for customers: turning potential customers into actual ones, capturing them from rivals and competing for sales to shared customers.

Customer loyalty is a preoccupation of marketing executives the world over. It costs more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. Businesses ultimately want to get and keep their customers because those that manage to do so have a strong competitive advantage. This is why customer loyalty programmes have become such an important part of many business strategies. Loyalty is more than just giving financial incentives though, it is about demonstrating that you deserve their loyalty in the service you give and the way you respond to them. It sounds like common sense, and it is. Companies would do well to go back to basics and apply a bit of common sense and a few old fashioned values.

Sally Bibb

Sally is a writer, organisational change consultant and co-author of A Question of Trust: The Crucial Nature of Trust in Business, Work and Life, and How to Build It, published by Cyan.