Steve Ridgeway is the outgoing CEO of Virgin Atlantic. He won’t remember me but way back when Virgin was the world’s best airline I worked with his team on building Virgin Freeway and met him a couple of times.

Steve has brought Virgin from just one aircraft to being a credible international airline. Along the way he has endured many ups and downs, but now he must be leaving. How do I know? Take a look at this email I received from him.

(Before you do, if something doesn’t ring true then don’t worry, I will explain afterwards)

Dear Ian,

We are excited to announce that we have been offered all of the Heathrow short haul remedy slots available following the International Airline Group’s acquisition of bmi.

We have fought hard for the right to fly short haul and take a strong challenge to British Airways within these shores. For 28 years both airlines have battled for customers all over the world and it has meant that British consumers have ultimately had some of the world’s best flying and lowest fares.

This is the beginning of an exciting new era in Virgin Atlantic history and we now feel a responsibility to everyone that has supported us in this challenge. You can look forward to a great short haul service with us but most importantly reap the benefits from the re-injection of vital competition we can provide on these routes.

Over the next two weeks, we will work to finalise our plans for utilisation of the available remedy slots and to confirm a flying timetable. We will primarily focus on flying between Scotland and Heathrow, running multiple daily flights from Edinburgh and Aberdeen to London Heathrow.

Flights will commence around 31st March 2013 and complement the new Heathrow to Manchester route that we are also introducing next year. We will be working with a wet lease partner to provide narrow body Airbus A320 aircraft to operate these short haul flights.

We will be revealing specific details of our short haul product and famed onboard customer experience in the coming months, so watch this space!.

We look forward to seeing you onboard soon.

OK, did anybody spot where Steve left the building? Let’s go back over it, this time with my inner voice narrating:

We are excited to announce that we have been offered all of the Heathrow short haul remedy slots available following the International Airline Group’s acquisition of bmi. (Can someone please tell me what a short haul remedy slot is? And why do I care?)

We have fought hard for the right to fly short haul and take a strong challenge to British Airways within these shores. (But so did bmi and they went bust or did I miss something?) For 28 years both airlines have battled for customers all over the world and it has meant that British consumers have ultimately had some of the world’s best flying and lowest fares. (Yes, but not comfy reclining seats in Upper class, I preferred the early days when you really wanted to be different and so treated me the Virgin way, not the BA also-ran way)

This is the beginning of an exciting new era in Virgin Atlantic history (but it’s not the Atlantic though. What happened to the short-haul Virgin Express?) and we now feel a responsibility to everyone that has supported us in this challenge. You can look forward to a great short haul service with us but most importantly reap the benefits from the re-injection of vital competition we can provide on these routes. (Last time I checked you can also fly London-Edinburgh and Glasgow on Easyjet, Ryanair and a host of other airlines. The issue is not competition, it is Heathrow)

Over the next two weeks, we will work to finalise our plans for utilisation of the available remedy slots and to confirm a flying timetable. (So are you writing to me now, why didn’t you wait until you had the timetable?) We will primarily focus on flying between Scotland and Heathrow, running multiple daily flights from Edinburgh and Aberdeen to London Heathrow.

Flights will commence around 31st March 2013 and complement the new Heathrow to Manchester route that we are also introducing next year. We will be working with a wet lease partner to provide narrow body Airbus A320 aircraft to operate these short haul flights. (Enough now, I don’t care about whether the lease is wet, dry, shaken or stirred. It isn’t relevant to me how you finance your aircraft)

We will be revealing specific details of our short haul product and famed onboard customer experience in the coming months, so watch this space!

We look forward to seeing you onboard soon (Well I live in Bristol and so if I want to go to these places I will travel from there, but thanks anyway…)

The bottom line is, dear reader, that this email is not intended to excite me. It is written with someone else in mind. Maybe Virgin were making a statement to BA, maybe to regulators, maybe to someone who cares, but not to me. If you were writing to me to rekindle my love affair with your brand and part with my hard-earned money to join you on your new short-haul routes, focus on the benefits that are relevant to me and not the features, otherwise you’ll be left on your lemon.

Ian Hughes is the CEO of Consumer Intelligence, a market research company that is dedicated to helping its customers make intelligent decisions using the best possible insight.

A few months ago I wrote a blog piece about my favourite coffee shop. In it I bemoaned the departure my favourite barista and I postulated about a terrible future without her.

The passage of time has brought me to a new coffee shop and I think that some of the lessons learned would also be useful to the mobile giant Vodafone.

My early morning coffee is a bit of a ritual for me. Ever since I lived in the USA, I have become used to having coffee from a coffee shop first thing. On my way in to work I stop off for an Americano in Clifton Village, a part of Bristol where every other shop seems to be a coffee shop. I was finally won over by one in particular where the manager would recognise me and deliver me my drink in a speedy and friendly way.

My traditional way of evaluating at things is on Quality, Service and Price. You can have two out of the three, but never the third. If you want great quality and great service, well you won’t get a cheap price.

For me, it’s coffee; almost all the companies charge the same so the big difference is service. It’s early in the morning and I am going in to work. I won’t be made to queue while one of the 3 assistants is making porridge, another is cleaning tables and the third is still on till training. My tolerance level is miles too low for that.

Now I have a new coffee shop a few doors down. No one seems to go in there, the price is 10% cheaper than those around it, they give a free Croissant (even though I don’t want one) and the coffee is good. But crucially the speed of service is lightning fast. I am the only customer in there at that time of the morning so I can get in and out in no time. Result.

So how does this relate to Vodafone? Well it’s come to the point where we need to say goodbye to them. Over the years I have watched our company phone bill spiral upwards to the point where Vodafone are one of our key suppliers. They are important to us. However, we are not important to them. I’ve lost count of the number of account managers who have come and gone. As they have struggled for profit, the service has slowly been stripped back.

In this modern age, a reduction in real customer support staff is normally accompanied by delivery of service on-line. This self-service piece normally adds value to the customer and also to the company.

Not for Vodafone, though. No portal here.

Service has gone down, price has gone up (still small fry for them, but massive for us). The only thing I can truly recommend is that their quality is excellent. But 1 out of 3 is not a good negotiating point.

So we started shopping around and, needless to say, we found a cheaper price and better service on networks that probably aren’t as good quality. But that’s 2 out of 3.

At this point I write to Mr Vodafone UK to tell him I am off and why.

A day later I get an email from our account manager wanting to restart a conversation and get a sales manager involved.

Too late. Surely the time to try and save us as a customer was about a year ago? Not after the horse has declared that they are going to bolt through the open stable door. The trick would have been to keep the horse happy, healthy and snug in a stable that was secure.

In the same way as it would have been easier for my coffee shop to keep me a loyal customer before I left. They won’t even notice I am gone and neither, in the greater scheme of things, will Vodafone. I’m just a stat.

At some point a senior manager (maybe even the CEO) will run around shouting, “The sky is falling, our customers are leaving us, how can we get them back?”

And the answer will be, start about a year ago, and start by understanding that the time to focus on customer loyalty is when you have loyal customers who love your brand. Not just after they left you for somewhere else.

It’s not an answer that pleases the accountants in the short term, but it is the only answer that delivers long-term growth in a service industry.

Ian Hughes is the CEO of Consumer Intelligence, a market research company that is dedicated to helping its customers make intelligent decisions using the best possible insight.

God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen
God save the Queen,
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us,
God save the Queen.

Since 1744 that song has been at the heart of the English/British nation as an anthem – which is nearly 300 years.

Already this summer I have heard the strains of the National Anthem many times and British Olympic hopes mean that I hope to hear it many times more.

To some extent I can’t get tired of hearing it. There is something about its monotonous repetition that is soothing.

What I don’t understand is why the customer service industry hasn’t learned that lesson. The anthem stays constant across the decades and it is that constancy that gives a sense of national strength and pride. Why can’t we deliver customer service with the same sense of monotonous repetition?

Some of you will already be trying to pick a hole in my argument. You might say, but the anthem has changed! It last changed 60 years ago. It changed from “God Save the King” to “God Save the Queen”. My response would be, you are missing my point.

The gradual evolution of the anthem, the fact that I know what it will be tomorrow, regardless of who is on the throne, in the same way that generations have, is what makes it familiar.

How many companies can claim the same thing? How many companies can GUARANTEE that the service experience that you will receive tomorrow will be the same as it was yesterday?

People used to ask me why I flew across the Atlantic with American Airlines. They would complain about the service being terrible and the food being bad etc etc. My response would be that at least it was consistent. Sometimes when I flew Virgin it would be amazing, sometimes it would be terrible. I just want it to be the same. Monotonously Repetitive.

Often, customer experience teams are looking to create something amazing, a wonderful experience. Just creating something monotonously mediocre is an amazing achievement. Something that is so good that it will be replicated for years, maybe decades to come.

Is the British national anthem the best in the world? I don’t know, I am not a musician. Is it the oldest? I don’t know. Has it been around for nearly 300 years? Yup. That’s good enough for me.

So the next time you are thinking about building a customer service experience, don’t think great, think OK, but repeatable. Trust me, it isn’t easy to do.

Ian Hughes is the CEO of Consumer Intelligence, a market research company that is dedicated to helping its customers make intelligent decisions using the best possible insight.