Stepping up your customer service

Richard Scarborough talks to Ashley Latter about the impact of coronavirus on the demands and needs of patients, and the increasing importance of customer service.

RS: Is good customer service now more important than ever before?
AL: Yes, 100 per cent. The reason being that we are going into a recession, which will probably be one of the deepest ones we’ve ever had. I’m old enough to have already gone through four and I have a feeling this one might last a while as well.

When things are tough and times are challenging, I think people become more demanding. They’re having to work a lot harder; they may have a cut in income or their business might not be doing as well as it should. So, if they are going to be spending their money, they want to make sure that they’re having an experience that’s really positive and memorable, so they can say, ‘Well, a difficult week, but Saturday night we had a really nice time’, for example.