Chief executive promotes high standard of customer service

Texan Ted Stone is the new boss of Yorkshire company Customer First UK. He spoke to Suzan Uzel about his vision for the organisation – and why customer service is no longer ‘the gym bag’.

AS the financial services sector looks to rebuild trust with the public in the wake of a series of scandals, Customer First UK is seeing increased interest in its standard, according to its new chief executive.

Ted Stone is now at the helm of the York-based not-for-profit company, which offers customer service accreditation to businesses and organisations. Departing chief executive Frea O’Brien stepped down after three years to “move on to other business ventures”.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Mr Stone, who was previously working for Sky in a senior manager role in the customer experience team, is focused on seeing the firm expand further into UK markets such as financial services, universities, public sector organisations and utilities.

“We’ve had a lot of interest from financial services recently because of them trying to ensure their customer relationships are being handled properly due to the trust issues they are facing right now.”

Banks have, in particular, been plagued with controversy in recent times with big bonuses, the mis-selling of financial products and the Libor rate debacle severely denting their image.

“Banks need to, in my opinion, go back to letting people feel like they’ve gone to their corner bank no matter which branch they go into and it needs to feel like something that you are as personally involved with as you would be your local post office or your local pub. It needs to have that personalised feel”, said Mr Stone.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Similarly, universities and public sector bodies such as councils have hit the headlines due to rising tuition fees and spending cuts respectively.

“I think there’s a big need for universities to really be able to demonstrate that students are getting value for money now that there’s been so much attention on the rising costs of actually attending”, commented Mr Stone.

Customer First UK, which today has 10 core staff members and a network of consultants and partners, was founded in 2002 as part of an initiative with Business Link London and Business Link York and North Yorkshire to provide a standard for public sector organisations wanting to draw down funding from regional development agencies and other bodies.

The organisation, which also holds conferences around customer service, was solely publicly sector funded until 2008 before it moved into private sector markets.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Market penetration is at the heart of Mr Stone’s strategy for the organisation – and he says he is the man for the job due to his extensive cross-sector experience.

“In America, we change sectors quicker than people do in the UK professionally. In fact your CV looks quite weak if you haven’t done it, if you haven’t moved from one sector to another you look a bit two-dimensional, that’s how it’s seen.”

So, Mr Stone has built up a CV of senior manager positions in customer service in sectors including healthcare, financial services, automotive, retail, hospitality and utilities.

In the UK, as well as Sky, he has previously worked at Fulcrum, formerly part of National Grid, and held a senior consulting role for Royal Bank for Scotland.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

This acts as “a massive pot for me to be able to reach into to help show anyone how we can tailor the standard for it to be proficient in bringing change to the organisation, regardless of the sector”, explained Mr Stone.

Originally training as a teacher, before moving into sales, Mr Stone hails from McGregor in Texas, but has lived in Dallas and Las Vegas.

“When I was working sales I found that for me to be really successful in sales it was about connecting with the customer. Selling is such a personal thing. People buy from people. It doesn’t really matter what the product is, it’s how does it feel. And as soon as I found that out I became very successful in sales.”

Mr Stone said that when he moved to the UK from the United States seven and a half years ago, customer service levels in this country were “ absolutely diabolical”.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

But he said there has been “a noticeable improvement” since then. “You have to imagine, I moved to the UK from Las Vegas which is hospitality-driven city so it lives and breathes service. When I first came here I couldn’t believe that everyone naturally accepted the fact that they didn’t get any service. There was no backlash when you got no service.”

But this has changed, said Mr Stone. “British people are quicker to say, ‘Excuse me this isn’t what I ordered, this isn’t what I wanted, this is cold...’ People feel more empowered to say this isn’t acceptable, it isn’t what I expected.

“I actually think that during the recession it [customer service] became more important to people. A lot of astute senior managers have realised that raising your service levels doesn’t have a really big impact as far as additional costs on your bottom line.”

And, holidaying Brits have experienced excellent customer service abroad and raised expectations here, he suggested. “When you go to other countries that are giving you exceptional service and then you come back it makes it so glaringly obvious that you aren’t getting it at home.”

Customer service, he remarked, is no longer “the gym bag”.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“You know how in July you could go out and buy a bottle of cologne and they will sell you a bottle of cologne, but in December you buy a bottle of cologne and they sell you that and, oh here’s your complimentary gym bag. It’s just something extra you get, you don’t know why. It’s near Christmas so you get it.

“Now it’s not the gym bag anymore. Now it’s part of the package and people are beginning to expect that service level at the same time as they are getting the product or whatever they have purchased from the company.”

Mr Stone has been associated with Customer First UK for about three years – as an adviser and speaker at the organisation’s conferences, and also an outsider taking an organisation through the standard. He said he feels strongly about the Customer First UK standard because of the “three-pronged approach”.

Customer First UK looks at an organisation’s customer focus in terms of its service delivery model, employee engagement, and its approach to marketing, he explained. This gives a “structured, stable and sustainable approach”, he said. “I really want organisations who could use the help right now to realise it. For example, I’m astonished that we’re not having more councils contacting us. Right now, if I was senior manager in the council I would do anything that was going to help me explain to people why we are making the decisions we are making with our spending because spending has been cut.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Although he says major international expansion is not on his immediate agenda, Customer First UK has developed the standard in South Africa with its partner ProServ, and more recently has seen an assessment taking place in Sri Lanka.

Mr Stone, who declined to discuss the turnover of Customer First UK, said he has “a legitimate passion and belief in how the standard helps”.

“Anyone can get too bogged down in the details of what you’re trying to do, and this is a constant compass for making you take a step back and keep that higher view and ensure the change you are trying to bring in actually supports the end result, and it isn’t change for the sake of change.”