Can a day get any worse?  How a ‘personalised’ service can make all the difference.

Some days you just look back and say, “thank goodness that is over”, or similar...

Tuesday was such a day.  It didn’t start well and got progressively worse.  By mid-afternoon, I was wondering what else could go wrong, when my credit card company texted me to check on my card usage.  Their unforgiving, automated service required me to agree to my last 31 transactions. This took five attempts.  Why? I was not permitted to ‘pause’ the automated process and trying to re-order 31 paper receipts on a table to match to the order chosen by them, was frustrating and took time.  I eventually managed to speak with a ‘human’ after four more attempts and it was confirmed that fraudulent activity had taken place.  Someone had used my card details to purchase around £1000 of products in Bangalore. 

My account was frozen (which is good), but because of this, I am liable to a late-payment penalty charge because my normal route to payment is now closed.  The credit company has not volunteered to grant me any extra time to make alternative arrangements but, ever the optimist, I am hoping that their reluctance to do so will dissipate.

My bad day didn’t end there.  Someone then rammed our car, resulting in significant damage.   The well-known recovery service took twice as long as was suggested by the call centre person, but, thankful to be finally out of the rain, my vehicle was eventually hauled back home.  The insurance company then explained that no further steps could taken until they had spoken with my partner, who wasn’t in a position to comply as she had mild shock.  It wasn’t until the next morning that she felt well enough to speak with them and collection of the damaged vehicle and delivery of a hire car was duly arranged.  

My hire car representative turned up and during our 20 minute journey, we got to talk about university education, his forthcoming move to “headquarters” and how we are both impressed by people who can speak more than one language fluently. (He speaks English and Urdu, with a smattering of German).  When we arrived at his offices, we both quickly realised that the replacement car was going to be too small for me; I’m just over 6ft 2in.  Without further ado and with no prompting by me, I was upgraded at no extra cost.

So, what has the above got to do with language services?  Well, the connection is the word ‘service’. What I believe, and certainly experienced again this week, is that some companies simulate a real desire to help their clients by getting their representatives to follow corporate process.  That is, their understanding of a ‘good service’ seems to be the same as offering a consistent, process-driven service.  Whilst two of the three companies I spoke with managed to fulfil my requirements, I felt that it was only on their terms and in their timeframe.  The hire car company, however, not only managed to fulfil their requirements and mine, but more importantly, treated me as an individual. Their representative had the scope to take decisions, and in doing so, made that leap to offering a ‘personalised’ service.

eTeams feels that some of the large language providers in our industry are more focused on the efficiencies of what they call their “production environment”, at the risk of de-personalising their service.  In our opinion, even the term ‘production environment” is unfortunate in that it betrays their attention.

Our objective is to deliver a personalised service. Instead of talking about “production environments”, we would rather discuss our approach to client care and linguist care.   

Is offering a personalised service measureable?  Yes it is!  And we are happy to explain how.  We admit we are not perfect, but with a 97% client retention rate and with each client able to discuss their requirements with our company directors during and also out-of-office hours, we believe that we are moving in the right direction.

“eTeams – translations you can trust”