HomeServe-ing good cx with happy engaged staff

EPISODE OVERVIEW:

Greg Reed joins us from HomeServe Membership where as Chief Executive Officer he goes out of his way to encourage staff engagement within the home emergency repairs business for an improved customer experience.

In this podcast interview with host Seth Adler, Reed explains why grinding out vendors, negotiating hard with staff and being watchful when it comes to customers and T’s and C’s is old hat. The ‘Amazonification’ model has created value for customers by realising and fulfilling their needs. “It gets the customer hooked because they like it and it replaces something that isn't as good. That’s what we've been trying to do the past five years or so,” he explained.

“Not all customers, but most people say, "Okay, that was good. I'll pay for that!”

“We've enhanced the product and we've given the guys new tools and a new attitude, and we've seen good results from that. Not all customers, but most people say, "Okay, that was good. I'll pay for that!”

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KEY QUOTES:

A job worth doing is a job well done

“I'm not saying do a bunch of stuff and not get paid for it, but what I am saying is if you do what you're supposed to do and you do it well, and you don't find ways of getting out of doing it, then customers are good people. They will pay.”

Open up dialogue

“One of the engineers sent me an email that said, ‘Oh! I've got a retention idea’[...]

"It was a great! I went into my loyalty guys and my retention guys and said, ‘What am I paying you guys for? This guys out there,’ but that's the thing, if you open up dialogue with the staff and there are no barriers—and sure, you’re going to get some ideas that aren't good and you’ll sometimes get the same old ideas, occasionally you’ll get a gem like that. This is something we're absolutely doing: we do 1.2 million repairs a year, so that guy's going to drive a lot of activity through that one idea.”

Always look through the lens of the customer

“I worry about the staff and I worry about customers. If I get them in the right spots and they have the right tools to do their job, their heads are in the right places and I've made their lives easy so they can make it easy for the customer, then I do all the other stuff that CEO's do. I think that's controversial and sometimes people want it to go the other way, and there are days when it does have to go the other way. I have to think about funding, under riding rates, and all that stuff, and it’s a real part of my reality. However, I always think about those things in the lens of the customer, and when I think about the customer, I always think about staff.”