John O’Connor – We Really Care about Customer Experience

John O’Connor – We Really Care about Customer Experience

Hello again, John O’Connor, CEO and Co-founder of Kollect here to give a few final thoughts regarding how Kollect’s customer culture is sustained and improved. We understood from the outset that mistakes were going to happen—that’s just human nature. So we built certain practices into our daily and weekly schedules to make sure that everybody was accountable and no customer query got stuck in administrative cracks. To cultivate that great customer experience, the customer obsession needs to come from the top, the bottom, the sides—from everywhere! Here’s a brief explanation as to how we make that value a reality.

The traditional way is this: the customer has a bad experience, they complain and you react; right? Well for us it was wrong. By the time the customer is taking time out of their day to tell you about their crappy service, you’re firmly on the back foot. Sure, there will be some mistakes that only the customer can notice but for the most part that little extra effort can really impress. It’s about proactive customer service. If a customer forgets to put out a bin, we reschedule at no extra cost. If a driver can see a forgotten bin, they go in and get it. If the bins are near the driveway, we’ll return them in a way that won’t obstruct the entrance. There are loads of simple steps that we take to improve a customer’s Kollect experience long before a problem occurs.

John O’Connor – “Feedback is essential for us.”
Feedback is essential for us. We value it from every source—that includes customers, staff, colleagues—everyone. Whether it’s positive or negative, it needs to be heard. We don’t go easy on each other either, if one of us makes a mistake we call each other out and everybody knows it’s for the right reasons. It’s because we’re passionate, we genuinely care. As I explained last week we have daily meetings and use our WOW and UNWOW system to ensure the entire team is moving in the same direction. We spend 40 plus hours a week understanding where we let customers down and that’s ok, that is what 100% takes so we’re happy to do it.

Of course, handling and preventing issues is just one aspect of our commitment to customer experience.

Underpinning all of that is our motto of offering simple and affordable products and services in a way that puts the customer first. Sometimes it’s general stuff like having no limit for our call times—if a customer wants to discuss something then our reps are under no pressure to get them off the line. Or sometimes its customer specific like accommodating for disabilities. Whatever the case, we do our utmost to help by offering simple booking methods like phone, text, facebook etc. and we’re very responsive. Our online queries are answered seven days a week from 8.30am to 11pm and we have a maximum response time of just two minutes.

There you have it. We work hard at Kollect to improve our customers’ experience every single day. As I’ve explained our methods are simple, effective and customer focused. Which, perhaps more than anything else, is the key to empowering Kollect’s culture.

John O’Connor,
CEO and Co-founder of Kollect.