Moments of truth

I was invited by the Royal Bank of Scotland to address a group of business people on the subject of customer retention. My credentials? My proud admission that we are still working today with businesses and people who were among our first clients and candidates when the business was established back in 1995.

From the beginning, I was passionate about recruiting, not selling - and everyone in the ACR team shares that ethos. We’re all commercially aware but our focus is firmly on customer service.

That isn’t always easy. We have two sets of customers, our clients and our candidates, and keeping them both happy can be a balancing act. But it is one we strive to perform.

During my presentation, I quoted Jan Carlson, president and CEO of Scandinavian Airline Systems (SAS) in the 1980s and early 90s. He popularised the concept of ‘moments of truth’ for business.

A moment of truth, according to his philosophy, was a contact between a customer and an employee. In his case that might have been a passenger checking in at the airport or being served during the flight. Each moment of truth was an opportunity to meet, and if possible, exceed a customer’s expectation for quality and service.

Every business has moments of truth. We identified ours in the early days of the business. They have changed as the industry has moved on and the internet has played a much bigger role. But we still have them – as every business should.

For candidates it’s about acknowledging receipt of a CV, their visit to our office, a follow up phone call after an interview, for instance.

For clients it’s about regular meetings, appropriate feedback and invitations to our regular employment law seminars.

We have created further moments of truth by introducing an initiative called ‘touches’. Recruitment partners are required to make and measure high quality customer contact.

At every moment of truth, we maintain our professionalism which is also reflected through our branding, our marketing, IT systems and the added value we offer to both sets of customers.

Our corporate social responsibility agenda provides further opportunity for customer, and potential customer, contact.

Preparing for the talk made me think about exactly what ACR does do to retain customers. Most of it is so built in to the way we do business we barely notice it anymore – it’s just ‘what we do’.

But it was a great revision exercise and one I felt worth sharing here…